THE 



Cretan Insurrection 



1866-7-8 



WILLIAM J. STILLMAN, 

Late U. S. Consul in Crete. 




.'v3^V ^' 



m 



NEW YORK 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1874 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 

HENRY HOLT, 

In tlie Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 






TO THE MEMORY OF 

LE GRAND LOCKWOOD, 

OF NEW YORK, 

IS DEDICATED, IN RECOGNITION OF THE UNOSTENTATIOUS, 

UNPROMISED, AND UNRESERVED LIBERALITY WHICH 

RENDERED IT POSSIBLE FOR THE AUTHOR 

TO REMAIN IN CRETE DURING THE 

INSURRECTION. 



PREFACE 



In committing to print the subjoined record of the Cre- 
tan revolt of 1866-7-8, I am fulfiUing a duty in regard to 
a series of events quceqiie ipse vidi et quorum pars tuagiia fui, 
and which, if not in themselves of importance, are so as 
a revelation of the manner in which political influences 
work in the East, and perhaps still more as a curious 
exemplification of the weight which personal accidents, 
private intrigue and pique, and the capacity or incapacity 
of obscure officials, may have in determining the affairs of 
great empires. 

In taking the position I did with reference to the insurrec- 
tion, I was actuated only by a love of justice, and in no 
wise by sentimental or religious prejudices ; but I hope it 
may be permitted me to say that, if I learned how fatal 
are the defects of the Greek race, its bitterness in personal 
rivalry, want of patriotic subordination, and the extrava- 
gance of its political hostilities, I saw also that it possesses 
admirable qualities, which the interests of civilization de- 
mand the development of; high capacity for political or- 
ganization, for patriotic effort and self-sacrifice ; and endur- 
ance and equanimity under misfortunes, which few races 
could endure and retain any character or coherence. 
Their amiable and refined personal qualities, and their 
private and domestic morality, have justified in me a feeling 
towards them for which I was utterly unprepared on going 
to the Levant, and give me a hope that the manifest lesson 



iv Preface. 

of the Cretan revolt may not be lost in their future, either 
to them or to the friends of the better civilization. I feel 
that the Hellenes are less responsible for the vices of their 
body politic than their guardian Powers, who interfere to 
misguide, control to pervert, and protect to enfeeble, every 
good impulse and quality of the race, while they foster the 
spirit of intrigue, themselves enter into the domestic politics 
of Greece in order to be able to control her foreign, and 
each in turn, lest Greece should some day be an aid to some 
other of the contestants about the bed of the sick man, does 
all it can to prevent her from being able to help herself. 
No just and right-thinking man can make responsible for 
its sins or misfortunes, a people which is denied the right 
to shape its own institutions without a studied reference to 
the prejudices of its protectors ; to manage its own affairs 
without the meddhng of foreign ministers, who dictate who 
shall be its administrators; to protect even its own constitu- 
tion against the violence and usurpation of an irresponsible 
and incapable head, without the secret but efficacious inter- 
vention of some foreign Power. A witness of every step 
of the late diplomatic intervention in Greek foreign affairs, I 
saw that in all the corps diplomatique at Athens Greece had 
not one friend — every one helped to push her into the 
abyss \ not one word of real sympathy or friendly counsel 
did she find from any foreign representative. The United 
States, which had, perhaps, more than any other nation 
a powerful moral influence, and could have helped her by 
wise words and calm and disinterested moral intervention, 
had chosen to send as the dispenser of that influence the 
most incapable, ignorant, and obsequious diplomat I have 
ever known in the service of our Government — a man who 
was an actual cipher in any political sense, and who, 



Preface. V 

on arriving in Greece (our first representative there), has- 
tened to mingle himself with the party intrigues of the 
country, ranging himself on the side .of the king, against 
the people, in such a way that his advent was, to use the 
words of one of the leading statesmen of Greece spoken to 
me at the time, '■ like a wet blanket " to the hopes of 
liberalism in Greece. 

The Hellenes must learn that they have no friends, save 
in the unprejudiced and charitable individuals who know 
them vvell enough to be able to overlook their foibles and 
petty vices, in view of the solid and genuine claims which 
they have to our liking and the support of Christendom. 
As one of those, I await the day when Greece shall have 
been mistress of herself long enough to prove whether or 
not she can govern herself v/isely, before I lend my voice 
to her blame for her failures or her offences. 



The Publishers feel bound to inform the reader that 
during the delay which has attended the publication of 
this work, several of the personages mentioned in it, and 
some whose character or conduct is severely criticised, 
have died. This explanation will relieve the author of the 
appearance either of bad taste or of vindictiveness; while 
to the fact that he was unable to give his personal super- 
vision to the work in passing through the press are due the 
errata which may be discovered, and an occasional want 
of uniformity in the spelling of proper names. 

New York, February i, 1374. 



CONTENTS, 



►♦■< 



INTRODUCTORY. 

PAGB 

Crete and the Ci etans, 13 

CHAPTER I. (April, 1866.) 
Ismael Fasha, 38 

CHAPTER II. (May, 1866.) 
Agitation, 4a 

CHAPTER III. (July, August, 1866.) 
Days of Terror, 50 



CHAPTER IV. (September, 1866.) 

Preliminaries of War, 61 

Ultima Ratio, 6s 

Mustapha Kiritli Pasha, 67 



CHAPTER V. (October, i866.) 

Getting to Work, . 7a 

Russian Intervention, 76- 



CHAPTER VI. (November, 1866.) 

Coroneos, 8r- 

The Convent of Arkadi, 83 



X Coniejits. 

CHAPTER VII. (December, 1866.) 

PAGB 

The Recoil of the Gun, 83 

Pym and the Assurance, 91 

CHAPTER VIII. (December, 1866.) 

Ignatieff Again, 95 

Respite, 99 

CHAPTER IX. (January, February, 1867.) 

More Disaster, loi 

A Page from the Blue-Book, 107 

CHAPTER X. (March-May, 1867.) 

Change of Administration, 109 

Hellenic Blunders, 113 

Effectofl-Ielleaic Politics, 115 

CHAPTER XI. (June— September, 1867.) 

Hussein Avni, . » 118 

A New Victim, 121 

Sphakia again, 123 

A New Campaign, . 125 

Bottled up, 127 

CHAPTER XII. (October, November, 1867.) 

Attack on Lasithe, 128 

Sphakian Campaign, 131 

Reschid, 13S 

CHAPTER XIII. (December, 1867.) 

Russian Plans Ripening, 137 

The Last of the Victims, 143 



CHAPTER XIV. (i868.) 

A'ali Pasha Fails, ... 148 

The End, ..... 152 



Contents. xi 

THE YEAR AFTER THE WAR. 

I'AGE 

Visit to Omalos, 154 



Alikianu, 



■57 



Hadji Houssein's Story, 159 

The Plain of Omalos, 165 

The Xyloscala, 167 

At Constantinople, 17S 



ArrENDi?;, 179 



The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 




INTRODUCTORY. 

STUDENT of classical ethnology, curious to 
restore the antique man, can do no better, so far 
as the Greek variety is concerned, than to go to 
Crete and study its people. The Cretan of to-day pre- 
serves probably the character of antiquity, and holds to his 
ancient ways of feeling and believing, and, within the new 
conditions, as far as possible of acting, more nearly than 
would be believed possible, and affords a better field of in- 
vestigation into the nature of the classical man than any 
existing records. 

The island is one of those paradisiacal isolations which 
facilitate civilization in its early stages, and preserve it from 
the encroachments of progress in the later. Its low latitude 
secures it against cold in winter, and its insular position 
against extreme heat, while the range of high mountains run- 
ning longitudinally through it gives its climate a salubrity pos- 
sessed by no section of the world's surface so near the sun. 
The standard summer temperature is from 8i° to 86° 
Fahr,, and once only in a residence of nearly four years I saw 
it as high as 92°, The minimum was 52°. Wild flowers 
never are wanting except in midsummer. The almond 
blooms in February (I have seen it in blossom on Christ- 
mas), and all the known fruits follow it in succession, each 
finding some locality and climate suited to it. 



14 The Cretan lusuji'eetiou of 1866. 

The fertility of the plains, and the inaccessibility of its 
mountain fastnesses, made prosperity easy and conquest diffi- 
cult, while its remoteness from the shore of either continent 
made ancient invasion not easy, and preserved the type of 
the composite Greek race from the barbaric innovations of 
Greece proper, so that we have the Greek race of b.c. 700 
undoubtedly more purely preserved than anywhere else. 

Only in prosperity and weight in mundane matters, in 
comparative consideration, they have passed to the other 
end of the scale from that in which Homer could say of 
their land: "There is a country, Crete, in the midst of the 
black sea, beautiful and fertile, wave-washed roundabout, 
with a population infinite in number, and ninety cities. 
The races are different, and with different languages — there 
are Achseans, there are the huger Eteocretans,* the Cydoni- 
ans, the crest-waving Dorians, and the divine Pelasgi. 
Theirs is Gnossus, a great city, and theirs is King Minos, 
who talked nine years with great Jove." 

This enumeration has evidently no relation to chrono- 
logical order, and unfortunately we have no intelligible 
traditions as to the order of settlement in Crete. Diodorus 
Siculus says that " the first inhabitants of Crete dwelt in 
the neighborhood of Mount Ida, and were called the Idaean 
Dactyls." But Scylax says that, according to early Greek 
tradition, Cydonia (in the western end of the island) was 
known as " the mother of cities." Its position and charac- 
ter of site indicate rather a settlement of Pelasgi coming 
from the west. 

Spratt finds in the geological record clear evidence of 



* Aboriginal or true Cretans, of whose distinctive characteristic, great sta- 
ture, make note in considering the Sphakiotes, who even to-day are remarkable 
foi tlieii size, and always assert themselves to be the most ancient Cretans. 



Crete and the Cretans. 15 

the Greek Archipelago having been formerly a fresh-water 
lake or series of lakes, and, if this be true, Crete must have 
been connected with the main lands of Europe and Asia 
Minor, in which case the aboriginal inhabitants would be a 
land migration, probably from Aryan sources. That a 
Phrygian colony known as the Idsean Dactyls brought here 
knowledge of certain arts and religious mysteries, and 
became to the people with whom they mingled, semi-divine, 
appears probable. The subsequent visit of the Tyrian 
Hercules, who, on his way to get the cattle of Geryon, 
called here as the rendezvous of his forces, and, to recom- 
pense the Cretans for their friendship, purged the island of 
wild beasts, may indicate a Phoenician colony or passing 
expedition. 

But admitting, as of possibility, that the Eteocretan was 
a land emigration, cavern-dwelling, as the abundance of 
the caves in the island suggests ; a collation of all the tradi 
tions makes it probable that the first important immigration 
was Pelasgic, and from the Italian shores, noted in many 
Greek traditions as the Tyrrhenian Pelasgi (Etruscans?), 
whose colonies came down by the Morea and tiie isles of 
Cerigo and Cerigotto by easy journeys to Crete. [The re- 
cords of Karnak show that, in the reign of Thotmes III., a 
great migration of Cretan Pelasgi came into Egypt, and 
became the Philistines (Pilisti or Pilisgi) ; proving that at this 
early period the hive was so full that it had begun to swarm.] 

This first immigration became, if my conjecture goes to 
the mark, the Cydonian stock — the subsequent one which 
Homer speaks of as Pelasgic, being of much later date ; 
the Dorian, which was of the highest importance in its ef 
feet, as finally assimilating or subjecting all other races, and 
the Achaean, a scarcely influential influx, coming within the 



1 6 The Cretan Instirrection of 1866. 

recognized traditions. The author of the " Isles of Greece " 
supposes two aboriginal races in the island, a needless mul- 
tiplication of *' original Adams," though an Asiatic of 
Phrygian race coming in at the east, and a Pelasgic at the 
west, seem to have been the first recognizable elements in 
the population. 

The myth of Jupiter and Europa is regarded as conceal- 
ing the history of the introduction of the worship of the 
moon by a Phoenician colony, who, combining with the 
population of the eastern end of the island, whose peculiar 
deity was Jupiter, produced the race over which Minos 
came to rule, from this fabled to be the son of Jupiter and 
Europa. The journey of Europa along the river Lethe 
indicates the course of this colony to the capital of Minos, 
Gortyna, which more anciently had borne the name of 
Larissa, a Pelasgic name, from which we might conjecture 
that it was founded by the colony of Teutamos, who, with 
a band of Dorians, Achasans, and Pelasgi, the builders of 
all the early Greek cities, is said by the early historians to 
have arrived in Crete three centuries before the Trojan 
war, and to have setded in the eastern part of the island, 
and given the early city its Pelasgic name. 

The present inhabitants betray differences of character 
so great as almost to indicate difference of race. The 
Sphakiotes are larger of build, more restless and adventur- 
ous, thievish and inconstant, turbulent and treacherous, 
than the people of any other section. The Seliniotes, in 
the western extremity, are the bravest of the Cretans, but 
less turbulent or quarrelsome, not given to stealing, and of 
good faith. In the eastern end, especially the region of Gor- 
tyna and Gnossus, the blessings of the rule of Minos seem to 
rest in pacific natures. The great Dorian invasion, about 



Crete and the Cretans. 



17 



1,000 B.C., gave the island a dominant caste, uniformity of 
language and customs, but without complete fusion of races. 
The language of Crete to-day is a Dorian dialect, and 
preserves many characteristics noted by the ancient au- 
thors. The use of Kapfa as c is used in Italian, either hard 
or soft (in terminal syllables generally the latter), the use of 
r for /, especially with the Sphakiotes, and the presence of 
many words in modern Cretan which have disappeared 
from modern continental Greek, with a comparative rare- 
ness of Turkish words, and entire absence of Albanian and 
Sclavonic, show how much less the Cretans have been 
affected by outside influences than other parts of the Greek 
community. I give a few of the words which retain their 
ancient form more closely than on the continent : 



Cretan. 


Romaic. 


English. 


uyoiiai, 


iTTjyaivu, 


I go. 


uKdrexoc, 


uvidioc, 


Inexperienced. 


avQ?.aiJ.TT^, 


<pUya, 


Flame. 


uva?'.<jfiaTa, 




Emeutes. 




uvu), Ictu (used to 


oxen), 


Haw, jee. 


uTTOpuh] (used in 


tracking animals), 


Spoor. 


inoTaxvas, 


irpiv, 


Before. 


apyaTiVjj, 


knepa, 


Evening. 


KaflTTTU, 


avaxupH, 


I'l leave (the Cretan in 
•j the sense of the Ameri- 
( can " skedaddle"). 


(5/)0ffd (lit. dew), 


rinoTe, 


Nothing. 


dijpov (a gift), 


finaxgki, (Tuiki 


sh). 


ipy<:> (J)iyu), 


Kpvdvu, 


I am cold. 


■ KClTa/iU, 


fkipu. 


I destroy. 


Kzftfia, 


KTijPOC, 


A beast of burden. 


uat^iipa 




'Bare (of mountains gen- 
erally), this being the ap- 
' pellation of the central 
mountains of the Sphaki- 
an range, Jlladara vottiia. 





1 8 TJie Cretan Iiisiwrcction of 1866. 



Cretan. 




Romaic. 


English. 
(A peculiar kind of cream 


{la'/MKa, 






\ cheese — not the viislthra 
( of Greece. 






\iuxa7v. 




7\.oyoiiaxi(i, 


A wrangling. 


r'vxi. 




TovdsicoKerpa 


Gun-flint. 


•Kapaavpu, 




cepvu, 


I sweep. 


napi^u, 




k^epxuf^at, 


I come out. 


TTOilOg, 




61060c, 


Passage, 


irpafia (T^pir 


Yfia) 


TLTiOTE, 


Nothing. 


Tai'Tepw, 




uvpioti, 


To-morrow 


Xa^'E-nH, 




"KSTpblodog, 


A rock)' site (generally 
applied to villages). 



There are few Turkish words in use, and those mainly 
of objects brought by the Turks: povdaTid, a lubber; rcifinovxi, 
a pipe; tov^eiu, a gun, etc. A few Italian: Kamravog, captain; 
fSere/ia (veudeDWiia), olive crop; (SkTaro (guastato); (iaTivd6a, a 
song, and some names of implements, with idioms which 
cling, as the use of niv, the comparative, instead of re'ppf. 

There is a trace of genuine Cretan literature, though its 
chief work, the " Erotokritos," is by an Italian colonist, 
Vincenzo Cornaro. The)'- have, however, many songs and 
many bards, though to any but Cretan ears the music is far 
from agreeable. I knew one of the popular singers, Kara. 
lambo, poet and singer at once, as most of them are (and 
many are imprGvisatori of considerable facility), ^e was 
so much in repute that no wedding or festivity was consid- 
ered complete anywhere in the range of a. day's ride from 
Canea unless Karalambo was there; and at other times he 
used to sing in the cafes on the Marina, screaming, to the 
strain of a naturally fine tenor, songs which, though to me 
not even music, used to melt his audiences into tears. lie 
was a patriot as well as poet, and when the insurrection of 
'66 actually broke out, his songs were so seditious, and ex- 



Ci'ete and the Cixtans. 19 

cited the Khaniote Christians so much, that he was driven 
into the mountains, and, joining a band of his neighbors, 
was one day wounded by the accidental discharge of a 
pistol one of his comrades was cleaning. The wound Avas 
fiital from want of surgical attendance. 

The Cretan music is always of a plaintive character, and 
monotonous ; in singing, they have a habit of incessant 
quavering, and this, with the drawling tone, makes it far 
from agreeable to an ear accustomed to cultivated music, 
but it has a decided character of its own. 

There were in Kalepa before the insurrection two impro- 
visatori of considerable repute, who were accustomed to 
carry on musical disputes, one singing a couplet, and the 
other replying in a similar one. Som.etimes it was a match 
of compliments, and sometimes the reverse, but following 
with tolerable exactitude the metre, a four-lined stanza, the 
second and fourth lines rhyming. All the ballads I have 
seen are in this form, the music also differing but little to 
my ear, though possibly to a Cretan there may be wide 
differences. 

The Cretans possess, in common with all the Greeks, the 
avidity for instruction and quickness of intellect which 
make of this race the dominant element in the Levant. 
They are tenaciously devoted to their religion and to their 
traditions, which have kept them up and preserved the 
national character against such a continuation of hostile 
influences as probably no other people ever Hved through. 
The history of Crete is a series of obstinate rebellions and 
barbarous repressions, since the first conquest by the Sara- 
cens in a.d. 820, a conquest which was followed by an 
almost complete apostasy from Christianity — sword-conver- 
sion, and by persistent attempts on the part of the Byzantine 



20 The Cretan hisurrection of 1866. 

emperors to reconquer it, until 961, when Nikephoras 
Phocas succeeded in driving the Saracens out. They seem 
to have made no considerable addition to the Cretan stock, 
since the population rapidly returned to Christianity, to 
which, judging from the known and more recent past, they 
had always probably remained devoted at heart. At the 
division of the Byzantine empire, Crete passed to Boniface, 
Duke of Montserrat, and from him v^as purchased by the 
Venetian Republic, 1204, from which time till its conquest 
by the Turks, completed in 1669, the Cretans Avere under 
a yoke that would probably have depopulated any other 
section of the Old World. The cruelties and misgovern- 
ment of the governors sent from Venice would be incredible 
if not recorded by Venetian historians and official records. 
The Venetians seem to have regarded the Cretans much in 
the same light as the English colonists of America did the 
Indians, and, when their wretched state came to the 
knowledge of the Senate, they sent commissioners to 
examine into it, from whose reports I translate some ex- 
tracts (quoted in Italian by Pashley), who, from the original 
documents in the public library of Venice. Basadonna, 
the first of these officers whose reports remain, says (1566) : 
"The tax-gatherers and others dependent on them use 
against these unhappy people, in one way and another, 
strange and horrible tyrannies. It would be a matter 
worthy of your clemency immediately to abolish so odious 
and barbarous exactions, since to maintain them is to 
abandon these wretched men to most cruel serpents, who 
lacerate and devour them entirely, or oblige the few of 
them v/ho remain to escape into Turkey, following the foot- 
steps of innumerable others wlio, from time to time, have 
gone away from this cause." Then from Garzoni (ii:;86); 



Crete and the Cretans. 21 

" In all the villages in which I have been, I liave seen the 
houses of the inhabitants, in the greater part of which 
there is not be seen any article for the uses of dress or 
table ; and for food, they are without bread or corn ; they 
have no wine; their women are despoiled, their children 
naked, the men slightly covered, and the house emptied 
of everything, without any sign of human habitation. 
And this wretched people ^' quella mcschiiiita de' huomini 'J 
is compelled by estabhshed custom to give to the cavaliers 
two 'angarie' [twelve days' work] each per annum, and is 
obliged also by ancient regulation to work as much more 
as the cavalier may need for the pay of eight soldini a 
day, which amounts to a ' gazetta ' [two Venetian soldi, 
or about one penny] and a fifteenth, introduced by them 
two hundred years ago, and not since increased. They 
are obliged to keep chickens and hens according to the 
number of doors [I do not feel sure of having properly 
translated this expression, obscure in the original], their 
masters having applied the term of doors to houses, 
which are built by the peasants themselves, and have 
no kind of use of doors, because the Cavaliers, in- 
dustrious for their own advantage, make doors as 
frequently as possible tq, increase the number of royal- 
ties. The beasts of labor, called donnegals, are obliged to 
plough a certain quantity of land, for which, planted or 
not, the peasant must pay the third. The donnegals are 
also obliged to work two angarie per annum. Mules and 
other beasts of transport must make two voyages to the 
city for the master. Animals of pasture the tenth, and 
a thousand other inventions to absorb all the productions 
of the land. If the peasant has a vineyard planted (the 
ground always belonging to the Cavaliers) and trained by 



2 2 The Cretan Insin'TectiGU of 866. 

him, althougli on land before v/ild, he must pay to the 
master, before marking the division for the royalty (which 
by ancient regulation gives one-third to the Cavalier and 
two to the peasant), five measures, called viisfac/ics, for 
each vineyard, under pretext that he has eaten part before 
the vintage, for the use of the fattichier [in Crete, even 
now, an open shallow kind of vat built in the fields, of 
flat stones, and cemented, in which the grapes are tram- 
pled], and under other most dishonest inventions. And to 
increase still more the royalty, they divide the vineyard 
into so many parts that few return more than fifteen mis- 
taches, in such a way that with fraud founded on force they 
take two-thirds for themselves and give one to the peasant. 
" There are chosen for judges of their country, as I have 
said. Castellans — writers who serve as secretaries {ca/icel- 
Ucii) ; and * Captains to look after the robbers,' who all 
set rapaciously to rob these poor people, tajdng what 
little any of them may have hidden from the Cavaliers 
under pretext of disobedience, in Avhich the peasant 
abounds, by reason of his desperation, so that he is in 
every way wretched. The Castellans cannot by law judge 
the value of more than two sequins, although by some 
regulation they are allowed autiiority to the sum of two 
hundred J>erJ>eri, about fourteen sequins; and because they 
have eight per cent, for the charges they make, all causes 
amount to two hundred perperi, however small it may be, 
in order to get their sixteen of charges, with thousand other 
inventions of extortion to eat up the substance of the 
poor. The Captains, whose name indicates their functions, 
have their use from robberies, and always find means to 
draw their advantage from the same, plundering the good 
and releasing tlie guilty, to the universal ruin. . . . Tht; 



Crete and the Cretans. 23 

men chosen for the galleys are in continual terror of going, 
and those who have the means, with whatever difficulty, 
from some vineyard, or land, or annuals, throw all away un- 
hesitatingly for a trifling price to pay for their dispensation, 
which costs fifteen or twenty sequins — expense which they 
cannot support. The poorest, hopeless of their release, fly 
to the mountains, and thence, reassured by the Cavaliers, 
return to their villages, so much the more enslaved as they 
are fearful of justice, and by their example make the other 
villagers more obedient, attributing to the CavaUers the 
power of saving them from the galleys. ... To 
which, add the extortions to which they are subjected 
by a thousand accidental circumstances, execution of 
civil debts, visits of rectors and other officers, to Avhom 
they are obliged to give sustenance at miserable prices. 
So that the peasantry, oppressed in this manner, 
and harassed in so many ways, annoyed by the reasonings 
of the Papists, and made enemies of the Venetian name, 
. . . are so reduced by the influences I have enumerated, 
that I believe I can say with truth that, with the excep- 
tion of the privileged classes, they desire a change of 
government, and though they know they cannot fall into 
other hands than those of the Turks, yet, believing they 
cannot make worse their condition, incline even to their 
tyrannical rule." 

I extract from the opinion of Fra Paolo Sarpi (16 15), a 
more Jesuitical, and, it would seem, more palatable advice 
to the Senate, since it was, in the end, and to the end 
followed : " For your Greek subjects of the island of 
Candia, and the other islands of the Levant, . . . the 
surest way is to keep good garrisons to awe them, and 
not use them to arms or musters, in hope of being as- 



24 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

sisted by them in extremity ; for they will always show ill 
inclination proportionably to the strength they shall be 
musters of. ... Wine and bastinadoes ought to be 
their share, and keep good nature for a better occasion. 
. . . If the gentlemen of these colonies do tyrannize 
over the villages of their dominion, the best way is not 
to seem so see it, that there may be no kindness between 
them and their subjects; but, if they offend in anything 
else, it will be well to chastise them severely, etc. . . . 
And in a word, remember that all the good that can come 
from them is already obtained, which was to fix the 
Venetian dominion, and for the future there is nothing 
but mischief to be expected from them." 

What a pity that Sarpi had not lived before Dante, 
that he might have been niched in the " Inferno " : 
" Questo e de' rei del fuoco furo." 

I have only space to epitomize a passage of the history 
of Crete, under the Venetians, to show how utterly infa- 
mous, unjust, and devilish was their regime. In the begin- 
ning of the sixteenth century, the provinces of Selino, Sfakia, 
and Rhizo seceded, and established an independent gov- 
ernment, which was for some time unmolested by the 
Venetian authorities. The governor of the seceded repub- 
lic finally presuming to ask in marriage for his son the 
daughter of a Venetian noble, the latter, to revenge the 
insult, plotted with the governor of Canea, and, pretend- 
ing to consent, lured tlie family of the soi-disant Greek 
governor, with a company of nearly 500 of his compa- 
triots, to the marriage feast. The guests having been 
intoxicated and gone to sleep, and the signal given to the 
authorities at Canea, the governor came with 1,700 foot 
and 150 horse, took the whole prisoners, and in various 



I 



C^'ete and the Crctmis. 25 

ways and different places massacred them, except a few 
who were sent -to the galleys. 

This was followed up, for the better terrifying of the 
seditious, by a raid on the village of Foligniaco, near 
Murnies, and on the edge of the plain of Canea, in which 
they took the whole population prisoners asleep, burned 
the village, hanged twelve of the primates, ripped open 
three or four pregnant women, wives of the principal 
people, put to death and exiled the whole population 
remaining, except five or six who escaped. The Provvedi- 
tore then called on all the Greeks of the lately revolted 
district to come in and surrender themselves, but, as they 
naturally declined, they were put under a ban which is 
perhaps the most horrible sentence ever given by a civilized 
community. No inhabitant of the proscribed district could 
secure his life except on condition of bringing in the 
" head of his father, brother, cousin, or nephev/." 

"At length a priest of the family of the Pateri-Zapa 
entered the city, accompanied by his two sons and by two 
of his brothers, each of the mournful party carrying in his 
hand a human head. (Of the five heads, the first belonged 
to the son of the priest, the second to one of his brothers, 
the third to his son-in-law^, and the fourth and fifth to sons 
of one of his brothers.) The wretched men placed their 
bleeding offerings before the Signer Cavalli and the other 
representatives of Venice, and with the bitterest tears 
stated whose heads they were. The facts were duly estab- 
lished by witnesses ; even the governor who had been sent 
to Crete to extirpate the seditious Greeks was moved, and 
the law was at length abolished." 

This was under the auspices of Christianity. Under the 
Crescent, things were at first better, but finally such as to 



26 The Cretan Lisinixction of 1866. 

cause wonder how there is still a Cretan people, consider- 
ing that even Dante could say : 

" Nel mezzo '1 mar siede un paese guasto 
Diss'egliallora, che s'appella Creta." 

The Venetian rule had reduced the population of the 
island to about 160,000, the tenth of its probable number 
under the Byzantine emperors. The anticipations of 
Garzoni were to the full realized, for the Cretan, favoring 
the Turkish conquest, made it possible, and avenged 
himself in the way of the v>^eak. The Turks, in recom- 
pense for the important assistance rendered them by the 
Cretans, exempted them from conscription or military tax, 
but learned no lesson from their conquered enemies, and, 
until the cession of the island to Egypt in 1830, Crete was 
the scene of the most unbridled license of individuals and 
fanaticism of sects. 

In passing from the Venetian to the Turkish despotism 
the Cretans had exchanged bad for worse. The Venetian 
was oppressive to the last degree in pecuniary extortions, but 
the Turk brought in slavery of another form — the harem and 
all its horrors to a captive people, even then celebrated for 
the beauty of its women. The Turkish rule has never been, 
and probably never will be, anything but piracy — the rule of 
the strong hand. The great object of government was to 
wring from the governed the largest possible amount of 
plunder; it is so still. No motive of civilized government has 
ever yet entered into the head of the Ottoman. The develop- 
ment of a country's resources, even to increase its revenues, 
has never been thought of A race of nomad conquerors, 
holding the land as if it waited the trumpet that should 



Crete and the Cretans 27 

expel it, and could only reap where its predecessors had 
planted, but never from its own sowing, it has extorted, 
butchered, and enslaved, without leaving behind it more 
than its bones to fertilize the soil. The noble public Avorks 
which marked the Venetian regime in Crete were allowed 
to fall into decay, the walls of the cities show the shot-holes 
made by the siege-guns, only filled up Avhen it was neces- 
sary to keep the wall from falling. 

Of the eaiiy period of Turkish rule in Crete we know 
litde. Pirates keep no record ; and the only insurrection of 
any note we hear of was that of 1770, which seems to have 
been mainly a Sphakiote affair, and to have resulted, on the 
whole, favorably for the mountaineers, from their having 
been allowed to maintain a virtual independence, as up to 
i860 no Turkish garrison was ever permitted in Sphakia. 
The fortress of Samaria has not been, in the records of 
modern history, penetrated by an enemy in arms. 

From 1770 to 1821, the condition of Crete was that of a 
man on the rack. The conquests and the advantages of 
apostasy had induced many Christians to become Mussul- 
mans; others followed from the bitter persecutions which be- 
gan soon after the insurrection of 1770, and made the life 
of the Christian in the plains utterly intolerable. The for- 
mer class generally became, ipso facto, fanatical persecutors of 
their late fellow-Christians, and the children or grandchil- 
dren of the converts became oblivious of their ancestors' 
creed and relations, and as, under the Koran, they lapsed 
into a more complete ignorance than the Christians, they 
soon became as fanatic as any. The influx of Turks was 
never considerable, but the Cretan Mussulmans, becoming 
the governing class, disposed of the lives and properties of 
their Christian fellow-countrymen entirely at their will. 



28 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

Tbeii' agas, or chiefs, by force of character became captains 
of bands of these Janissaries, as they were called, and estabhsh- 
ed a sway beside which the Venetian was a bed of feathers. 
The Venetian was inhuman ; the Janissary was devilish. I 
have known several men who lived in the island while the 
Janissary government was in full force, and who have testi- 
fied to me of the occurrence of such horrors as no system 
of slavery known since the establishment of Christianity can 
show. Every rayah (beast or domesticated animal) was 
utterly at the mercy of his aga, who could kill, rob, or tor- 
ture him at will, without responsibility before any law, or 
any obligation towards him. If the aga wanted money, he 
went to any rayah he suspected of being possessed of any, 
and ordered him to hand it over. If he wanted work done, 
he ordered the rayah to do it. If he fancied the rayah's 
wife or daughter, he went to his house, and ordered the man 
out of it until his lust was satisfied, and if any resisted he 
was killed hke a dog. If a Christian celebrated his nuptials 
with a girl of great beauty, he received from the aga a hand- 
kerchief with a bullet tied in the corner of it, and if he did 
not at once send his bride to the aga he paid the penalty 
with his life. The only resource was to fly to the moun- 
tains before the aga had time to send his men to seize him. 
Most of the beautiful girls and women were sent to the 
mountains as a precaution, which is probably one reason 
why the women of the higher mountain districts are so 
much more beautiful than those of the lowlands. 

The Janissaries even ruled the governors sent by the Sul- 
tan, and deposed or assassinated them when they did not 
please. Needless to say that _the poor islanders had no 
hope of justice as against their tyrants. It was forbidden 
to any Christian except the arclibishop to enter the city 



Crete and the Cretans. 29 

gates on horseback, and, the Bishop of Canea havuig trans- 
gressed this law, the Janissaries took him prisoner, and de- 
termined to burn him and all his priests. About to carry- 
out this decision, the Pasha intervened, and to pacify them 
issued an order that no Christian man should sleep in the 
walls of Canea, and accordingly the whole adult male popu- 
lation was mustered out every night, leaving their wives and 
children in the city. There is hardly room to wonder that 
the Cretan is still a liar, rather wonder that he is still a man, 
with courage to revolt and die, considering that only one 
generation has intervened between him and a slavery more 
abject than any domestic servitude the civilized world 
knoAvs of. 

The oppression became more and more brutal and blind, 
and the Cretans, crushed and stupefied, thought of nothing 
but saving life by the most abject submission. Even when 
the agitation which led to the Greek war of independence 
began, the Cretans were not moved; but in June of 1821, 
the Mussulmans massacred a large number of Christians, 
some thousands, in the three principal cities. This was 
followed up by a demand that all the Christians should 
give up their arms, a demand which was followed by the 
revolt of Sjjhakia, the mountaineers having never consented 
to this degradation. The rising of the district about Ida 
followed, and the war was so vigorously carried on that in 
a month the open country was almost entirely cleared of 
Mussulmans, 

This stage of the war developed a man whose name has 
become one of the historical in Crete, Antom Melidoni. 
Collecting a small band of bold men, he swept from one 
end of the island to the other, falling on the negligently 
guarded posts, and taking them by storm in rapid succes- 



30 The Cretan Instirrection of 1866. 

sion. His hardihood knew no inipossibiUties, disparity of 
numbers made no difference in his calculations, he measured 
moral forces alone, and flung his sword and name into the 
scale against any opposing numerical force. Surrounded 
at night by superior forces, he led a charge sword in hand 
on the hostile circle, broke it, and drove the Pasha's army 
from the field, not permitting its disordered masses to 
re-form until the walls of Candia sheltered them. A detach- 
ment that made a sortie to attack him was destroyed, and 
another victory following this, the Pasha of Candia, express- 
ing admiration of his prowess, begged to be favored with 
an interview. The Cretan hero, trusting himself to no 
temptation, treachery, or delay, replied that the Pasha 
would soon be his prisoner, and that then he might look 
at him as much as he liked. And the prophet fulfilled the 
prediction to the letter. 

So far, however. Christian and Turk fought on equal terms. 
No discipline entered on either side — the Janissary fought the 
partisan, and the superior enthusiasm of liberty turned the 
scale in favor of the Christian. They had yet to meet 
their strongest foes — internal dissension and disciplined 
force. The first did its work quickly, and Melidoni was 
assassinated by Russos, the Sphakiote chief, in jealousy of 
his dominant influence. A Moreote chieftain, Afendallos, 
was sent from Greece to replace him, but, incapable and 
without control of the Cretans, his command was in every 
way tmfortunate, and he was superseded by a French Phil- 
hellene of ability, Baleste, who for a moment restored the 
fortunes of Crete, but, deserted by the wretched Afendallos 
in the heat of battle, and the Cretans being carried away in 
panic by the example, Baleste was surrounded by the Turks 
and killed. At the same time, an Egyptian army coming 



Crete and the Cretans. 31 

in to reinforce the exhausted and demoraUzed Janissaries, 
the war became for the Christians a series of disasters, 
reheved for a time by the management of Tombasis, a Hy- 
driote chief, who again cleared the open country of the Turks, 
and laid siege to Canea. The arrival of new forces from 
Constantinople obhged him to retire to the highlands, and 
an Egyptian fleet arriving debarked a fresh army, which, 
marching into the interior, surprised a great number of 
villages, and in a single raid put to the sword nearly 20,000 
men, women, and children. Tombasis, watching his oppor- 
tunity, fell on a small detachment of Egyptians, and cut 
them to pieces. The Christians rallied, and, swarming 
down from the mountains, assailed the retiring army with 
such fury that they killed 7,000 men. 

A new Egyptian expedition of 10,000 troops Avith a large 
squadron reinforced the Ottoman army, and the com- 
mander, Ismail Gibraltar, so-called from having been the 
first Turk to sail beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, an able, 
adroit, and comparatively humane man, began to assail the 
Sphakiotes on their weak side, and induced them by 
bribery to withdraw from the hostilities. The other dis- 
stricts, many times decimated, had not the force to main- 
tain the struggle, and Tombasis, after making a vain effort 
to rally the elements of another struggle, abandoned the 
island, which submitted almost entirely. Thousands of the 
most devoted and patriotic Cretans went to Greece, where 
they fought bravely for the common nationality. We see 
still on the plains of Athens the tomb of the corps that 
perished there to a man refusing to turn their backs to the 
Turk. 

After the battle of Navarino, the insurrection broke out 
anew ; an expedition from Greece under Kalergis captured 



32 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

Grabusa by stratagem, Kissamos was taken by siege ; soon 
the Cretan Mussulmans (the regular Egyptian forces being 
engaged in the Morea) were shut up again in the three for- 
tresses of Canea, Retinio, and Candia, and would soon, in 
all probability, either have abandoned the island or have 
perished in it, had not the three allied powers decided that 
Crete should be united to the government of Mehemet Ali, 
and notified their decree to the Christian population. 
(Pashley, " Historical Introduction to Travels in Crete.") 

I The establishment of the Egyptian regime was at first pro- 
ductive of great relief to the Christian population, as Mehemet 

\ Ali had shrewdness enough to comprehend that their oppres- 
sion would be the disfavor of the Christian powers, now for 
the first time clearly recognized to be mistresses of the 
fortunes of the Ottoman Empire, and to perceive that for 
material prosperity the Christian element was far more 

• available than the Mussulman, corrupted and degraded by 

, long unchecked and unmeasured abuse of power, and de- 
' pendence on servitude of others, the most hopeless of all 
slavery. Order was re-established, and political organiza- 
tion, which Crete had never known, was introduced, exiles 
began to return, and all promised a better re'gime than any 
Cretan could have hoped for under foreign rule. 

The Pasha, in his designs of obtaining complete indepen- 
dence, saw also that he must some day count the Turkish 
population of Crete as his enemies ; all these causes com- 
bined gave the Christians an advantage over the Mussulman 
element. After a time, however, the pirate's instincts took 
the predominance, and Mehemet Ali, well assured of his 
possession, began to measure the capacity of the island for 
extortion of taxes. The promises made at the time of 
pacification were unheeded, imposts succeeded each other, 



Crete and the Cretans. ^'ii 

until the population, alarmed, had recourse to their imme- 
morial expedient of an assembly, and, several thousand 
strong. Christian and Mussulman alike, they met at 
Murnies, unarmed and accompanied by their families. 
This habit of so assembling has from ancient times played 
an important part in the history of Crete, and was known 
as Syncretism. To this day, every crisis and every impor- 
tant measure referring to the general welfare is discussed 
in a full assembly of deputies of the whole population. 

The assembly of Murnies was peaceful ; no one brought 
his arras, no violence of any kind was perpetrated on any 
interest or person. The assembly petitioned the protecting 
powers for redress and the fulfilment of the promises made 
at their submission, but the indifference of the soi-disani 
Christian powers to everything that implied the rights of 
the subject had already descended on the Greeks, so lately 
emancipated by the "untoward event;" and the French and 
English residents at Alexandria, more charmed by Egyptian 
music than the claims of justice, heard what was agreeable to 
the Viceroy, and the English agent even advised him to 
make an example of insubordination which should save him 
any future trouble. So encouraged, the arbiter of life or 
death to this brave people sent orders to execute a number 
of persons, both Christian and Mussulman. The Governor, 
Mustapha Pasha, now known as Mustapha Kiritli (Cre- 
tan), a hard and barbarous Albanian, bred in the brutalities 
of the long wars with the Christians, readily complied, and 
seized a number of persons at Canea indifferently. At the 
same time, the same orders were sent to other provinces, 
and a general and simultaneous execution took place. 
Many of the victims had no connection with the assembly, 
nor does the number or quality seem to have been fixed. 



34 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

The Albanian butcher caught the spirit of his master's order, 
and hanged at random. Pashley says that thirty-three 
were hanged, but perhaps he had a desire to diminish the 
enormity of the deed for which he declares the English 
agent at Alexandria to have been largely responsible. 
Residents at Canea at that time have assured me that over 
eighty were hanged at Murnies, and the then Austrian con- 
sul at Canea has repeatedly declared to me that there were 
several hundred victims, and that he himself had seen the 
bodies hanging on the trees of Murnies, until the whole air 
round was infected by them. This was in 1833, and until 
1840 the Butcher held the island tranquil under the rod of 
his menace. 

In 1840, insurrectionary movements took place, which 
were attributed to English influence, and said to be encour- 
aged by the English admiral at Suda. I have heard from 
residents at Canea * (non-Cretan) that the admiral facili- 
tated the introduction of muskets and ammunition, and 
advised the chiefs to ask for an English protection. This 
proposition was favored at the assembly of that occasion, 
but the Turkish authorities secured its rejection by per- 
suading secretly the chiefs that their choice would be be- 
tween annexation to Greece and Enghsh protection, and 
as, of course, they preferred the former, the project was 
unanimously rejected, having secured which, and the con- 
sequent English indifference, Mustapha, by an energetic 
blow, suppressed the movement. 

In 1858, a similar crisis was made use of by the French 
government, whose agent openly took the part of the in- 
surgents, bullied the authorities, and encouraged the Cre- 

* One of whom was a dragoman of the English consulate at the time. 



Crete and the Cretans. 35 

tans to look for French support. The assembly was held 
at Nerokouro, and petitioned the Sultan for relief from 
the most weighty grievances of the population. It was at 
once determined to suppress the movement, like the former, 
by force, but disturbances breaking out in the Christian 
provinces of Turkey, and the attitude of France causing 
distrust, the Porte finally yielded, made the concessions 
demanded, and the assembly broke up. This outbreak 
was remarkable for one incident which may have had 
much to do with the solution arrived at. The govern- 
ment had determined to obtain from its adherents an 
address in opposition to that of the assembly, and it was 
considered needful to have the signature of the Bishop of 
Canea. 

This prelate, one of the most worthy and pious bishops 
Crete has had in modern times, refused to sign, and com- 
pulsion was applied, the Bishop being shut up in a room 
with the council, and a pen put into his hand and applied 
to the paper by force. But he resisted all pressure, de- 
claring that, if they killed him, he would not sign what he 
knew to be a falsehood. This contest of will lasted 
hours, when the physique of the Bishop gave way, and 
he fainted, not having yielded. He was carried to his 
house in great excitement, which rapidly spread and in- 
creased, until he died in the course of the day. The 
Cretans regarded him as a martyr, and his death fired 
them with still greater enthusiasm. 

Never was moment more favorable for insun-ection ; and 
that the Cretans contented themselves with such moderate 
demands as the relief of some of the newest and most 
oppressive taxes, and yielded on the promise only of re- 
dress, dispersing quietly to their homes, shows that they 



6 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 



were not, as they -svere represented by unfriendly writers, 
disposed to factiousness and insurrection. 

The promises made in 1858 were never fulfilled — if 
there is honor amongst thieves, there is none amongst 
Turks; and when, at the death of Abdul Medjid, his 
successor, Abdul Aziz, was reminded of the promises 
made to the Cretans, he replied that he was not bound 
by the engagements of his predecessors, and Cretan re- 
forms lapsed into the abyss of good (and bad) intentions. 
From that time the island was moved by discontent. The 
next governor, Ismail, a clever, cunning Greek renegade, 
charlatan in everything but intrigue, of the Avorst possible 
faith and honesty, avaricious, mendacious, and cruel, but 
plausible and persuasive, succeeded in delaying agitation by 
promises and bribes, by dividing the chiefs one against the 
other, till 1864, when another assembly was held, and 
another petition drawn up and delivered to the governor 
to be forwarded to Constantinople, when the assembly 
dispersed. Ismail immediately convoked an assemblage of 
his adherents, and had a counter-petition forwarded, assur- 
ing the Porte of the perfect content of the Cretans 
with their governor and their state. The true petition 
was never heard of again, but the bearers of the 
false one received the Medjidieh, and Ismail the thanks 
of the Sultan, with presents which he valued much 
more. 

The ensuing winter was one of great distress, and the 
spring passed without renewal of the disturbances or peti- 
tions, but in the autumn of that year, after my arrival in 
the island, I heard that there would be an assembly the 
following spring, 1866. The discontent was very great. 
New taxes on straw, on the sale of wine, on all beasts of 



Crete and the Cretans, 2>7 

burden, oppressive collection of the tithes, together with 
short crops for two years in succession, had produced very- 
great distress, and the Governor added to these grievances 
his own extortions, with the most shameful venality in the 
distribution of justice, and disregard of such laws of proce- 
dure and punishment as existed. The councils were abso- 
lute mockeries, and the councillors his most servile tools. 
The summer of my arrival, I was told by the surgeon of 
the civil hospital of a death that had just occurred under 
his care, in prison, of an old man, arrested for an offence 
which his son had committed, and because the son could 
not be found. 

Men accused of offences by Ismael's partisans were thrown 
into prison, and kept indefinite periods without trial until 
some friend went to bribe his accuser. Ismael never went 
out into the island for fear of assassination, so well did he 
loiow the hatred borne him. This was the state of the 
island when I arrived in 1865. 




CHAPTER I. 

HERE was an annual fair at Omalo in the 
month of April, and I had intended to make 
this the occasion of a journey through 
Sphakia. The Pasha was very earnest in coun- 
selling me not to go, and magnifying difficulties for the 
passage; but this only made me more disposed to go, 
if only to cross his humor, as he had been exceedingly 
annoying to me, and we carried on a polite war, defensive 
on my side, but on his, part of a systematic course of bully- 
ing the consuls in order to diminish their influence with the 
people. His tactics were to encourage infractions of the 
consular prerogatives, imprison their employees or proteges, 
make questions at the custom-house, etc. He had, imme- 
diately after my arrival, got up a question with me, a patrol 
of zapties (Albanian police) having entered the consulate 
to seize and carry off one of the sons of the vice-consul, 
who resided in the consulate. 

I demanded an apology, which he refused. We then 
exchanged sharp nobes, first in French, and then on his 
part in Turkish, to which I replied in English — a mutual 
checkmate. Meeting him at a whist party just after, he 
complained that I had written in English, and he had been 
obliged to hunt Canea for three days in order to find some 
person in confidence who could translate it for him, to 
Avhich I replied that after four days' search for a person 
whom I could admit into the secrets of the consulate, I 
had been finally obliged to have recourse to the public in- 



Ismael Pasha. 39 

terpreter. He thereupon promised to write in French, and 
in this language the diplomatic broil went on. The begin- 
ning of the row had been an exchange of words between 
the patrol and the offending protege. Whose the fault of 
the first word was an open question, but one with which 
mine had nothing to do, as no provocation justified in- 
fringement of the consular privilege of exterritoriality. 
The zapties were put on trial. I had four witnesses, who 
deposed that they saw them in the house. The four zap- 
ties swore that they had not entered the doors, and the 
Pasha declined to render judgment against them, saying 
that, as there were four witnesses for and an equal number 
against, the truth could not be ascertained. I demanded 
that the testimony should be taken down for transmission 
to Constantinople, whither I intended to appeal. By this 
time the affair occupied the whole attention of the popula- 
tion of Canea, a large majority being on my side, and the 
declaration of my intention 'to refer the affair to Constantino- 
ple annoyed the Pasha very much, as he saw that he would 
be compelled to make excuses. He, ingeniously, in taking 
the testimony of my witnesses, omitted administering the 
oath, while he administered it to his own. When, therefore, 
the certified copy of the proceedings was delivered me, I 
called in the parish priest, and took the evidence anew ynder 
oath, affixed it to the record, and sent it all on. This was 
having a trump too many for him, as he had intended to in- 
vaHdate the evidence of my witnesses on the ground that 
they had refused to take the oath. 

Judgment was delivered in Constantinople, ordering the 
apology to be made for violation of domicile, and the min- 
ister on my part engaged my protege to make a declaration 
that he had not had any intention of insulting the authori- 



40 The Creian Insurrection of 1866. 

ties. But, -with this positive order communicated to both 
of us, he denied for several weeks that he had had any 
orders on the subject; but as I stuck to the affair like a leech, 
having nothing else to absorb my energies, he finally admit- 
ted judgment, and ordered the mulazim to ask my pardon, 
but cunningly managed to have the amends made in his own 
audience-room to escape eclai. I said nothing, but waited 
until he made me a visit, and without any warning intro- 
duced my culprit; and before he knew what was passing, 
the Roland was delivei'ed for his Oliver. He did not at- 
tempt to conceal his annoyance, nor I my satisfaction, for 
h e had notified me that he expected our apology chez lui. 
This was not the end of the liliputian diplomatics, for on 
my next visit to him the Pasha insisted on presenting me 
with an intaglio, which, he said, he had bought of a peasant 
some days before. He knew that I was an amateur of 
gems, and he was a collector, and had several very fine 
ones. The intaglio was exquisite, but the genuineness 
doubtful, and, when he insisted on forcing it on me in spite 
of my repeated refusals, I accepted it, with the intention of 
sending it to the government if genuine, so as not to be 
under obligations to him. Reaching home, I drew a file 
across it, and found it to be a paste copy worth a dime. I 
immediately wrote him a note, enclosing the file, and telling 
him that, as he was a buyer of gems, and might not know 
how well they were counterfeited, I begged to enclose him 
an instrument I had found very useful. 

After this skirmish, the general result of which, enor- 
mously magnified in popular report, was a mortifying de- 
feat to the Pasha, merely froni the obstinacy with which he 
had fought the question, we got into a chronic state of 
pique, and my resolution to go to Omalo and Sphakia put 



Ismael Pasha. 41 

him into a great irritation. He had no right to oppose ray 
going, but tried to make trouble, and began to talk about 
intrigues, etc. However, the news coming down from the 
mountains that the fair was to be turned into an Assembly- 
stopped me, for a Cretan imbroglio is something into which 
no wise man will allow himself to be drawn voluntarily. 
On the 12th of April, the Assembly began to gather at 
Omalo, whence it moved to Boutzounaria, then to Nero- 
kouro, nearer to Canea, where it remained until the gather- 
ing was nearly complete, when it moved back to Bout- 
zounaria. 




CHAPTER II. 

I 

HE real agitation began when the Assembly final- 
ly adjourned to Boutzounaria, a tmy village at 
the edge of the plain of Canea. Three thou- 
sand men were assembled on a little plateau overlook- 
ing the plain, and about three miles from the city. 
Here gushes out of the living rock the stream which supplies 
the city with water, by an aqueduct which dates from the 
Hellenic times. Metellus cut it when he laid siege to Cy- 
donia, and the Cretans in the war of Greek independence 
relocated the offence, and though, in the latter case, the siege 
was raised by a fleet and army coming to the assistance of 
the Turks, the sufferings produced by cutting off the water 
were very great. 

From he-re the people had a safe retreat into their fast- 
nesses above, and had nothing to fear from the Turkish 
forces. They came unarmed, but kept patrols at night on 
all the roads leading from the city to guard against surprise. 
By day they could observe the whole plain from Suda to 
Platania ; and here, looking down on the orange groves of 
Murnies and Perivoglia, the wide expanse of olive orchards, 
and the fields where thousands of sheep, the property of 
Mussulmans mainly, feed while the herbage is green with 
the spring rains, they passed the time much after the old 
Greek fashion, games of agility and strength occupying the 
time of the young, while the old discussed the affairs of 
state ; but no disorder occurred during the session of the 
Assembly proper. 



Agitation. 43 

Sheep were roasted whole, the messengers came and 
went, deputations from the further districts came in slowly, 
others whose affairs demanded their presence at home went 
away, there being none of those professed politicians who 
live by attending conventions, and making the public harm 
their good, so that there could be no vicarious expression 
of opinion. 

Finally, all was done, the 7ie pltis ultra of democracy had 
said its say, and signed its name for the indignant regards 
of the most despotic of sovereigns. A solemn deputation 
of gray-headed captains of villages, the executive commit- 
tee, brought to each of the consuls a copy of the petition, 
and consigned the original to the Governor for transmission 
to Constantinople. This functionary had been growing un- 
easy about the apparent unanimity and deliberateness of the 
Assembly, and, having cast his lead occasionally and found 
the water deeper than he thought, began to be anxious to 
see the Assembly dispersed. The moral force of the recog^ 
nition by the consular corps of the peaceful and legal 
character of the meeting had dissuaded him from inteiTupt- 
ing its labors ; but, the petition once delivered, he peremp- 
torily ordered the Cretans to go home and wait the answer, 
intending to repeat the trick he had so successfully tried 
before, namely, arresting the chiefs and calling a counter- 
assembly ; and, further ordering the committee to disperse, it 
refused. 

This was the position into which the Pasha had desired 
to draw the Cretans. Their Assembly was perfectly legal, 
they having a firman which permitted them to meet un- 
armed, the Porte having long before seen the impolicy of 
depriving them of a custom which was of so great antiquity 
and reverence ; but the Pasha hoped to give an illegal color 



44 ^■^^^ Cretan InsiLvrection of 1866. 

to their refusal to obey his order, and, according to his habit 
of making his will the supreme law, determined to make 
use of their persistence in their rights to precipitate the 
collision which he knew they were unprepared for; and, 
having once excited armed resistance, even against an 
illegal use of authority, he confidently counted on the sup- 
port not only of his own government, but of the consuls. 
To this end, he called a conference of the consular corps, 
at which, having stated the measures he had taken, he 
declared his intention to use the military force at his dis- 
posal to disperse the Assembly. In this conference, a 
division was shown as to the advisability of using force. 
The French consul (a Levantine* of the lowest order, 
a bastard of one of the De Lesseps family by a Jewish 
adventuress, and an intense hater of the Greeks ever since 
the society of Syra, where he was once Chanceller de Con- 
sulat, refused to recognize his mistress, a retired saltim- 
b'anque from a cafe chantant of the Champs Elysees) sup- 
ported the Pasha in everything, and even urged him to 
greater arbitrariness. The English consul, Mr. Dickson, a 
man of the most humane character and entire honesty, had 
an unfortunate weakness before constituted authorities, and 
the greatest possible respect for the Turks, coupled with an 
Englishman's innate dislike for a Greek. He had his 
orders, moreover, to co-operate with his French colleague, 
and, with his good faith and unsuspecting nature, he was 
no match for his intriguing and mendacious yoke-fellow, 
who led him wherever he wished. It was like coupling a 



* Levantine is a term applied to people of foreign ancestry bom in Turkey 
and brought up there. With few exceptions, they are the most corrupt, venal, 
and morally degraded class of the population of the Turkish empire. They 
furnish all the legation and consular dragomans, a class whose corruptibility 
lias passed into a maxim. 



Agitation. 45 

faithful mastiff to a dirty bazaar dog. These two supported 
the Pasha from very different motives, but with the same 
result. All the others opposed any violence as inexpedient 
and unjustifiable, being entirely assured of the peaceful in- 
tentions of the committee. Ismael opened the discussion 
by rehearsing his labors with the Assembly to induce them 
to submit and disperse, and declared that, having exhausted 
persuasion, he should employ force if the committee did 
not at once dissolve. Mr. Dickson said that his Excellency 
deserved great credit for his moderation, and hoped that 
he would continue to show the same quality, adding that 
thus far the Assembly had behaved in a strictly legal man- 
ner, being convoked in accordance with their privileges, 
but admitted that, if they refused to disperse on order, they 
rendered themselves amenable to force. M. Derche, the 
French consul, urged their inmiediate violent dispersal, but 
the others all declared their opinion that, the Assembly 
having met for a legal purpose, and having so far com- 
ported themselves in an entirely unofifensive manner and 
showed no intention of going beyond the object for which 
they had met, the Pasha had no pretext for the employ- 
ment of force. Mr. Colucci, the Italian consul, then stated 
that he had received information that the committee had 
expressed their wiUingness to disperse on receiving the as- 
surance that the signers of the petition should not be persecu- 
ted by the Pasha, and that he considered that the Governor 
owed this assurance, since he and all others admitted that the 
Assembly and committee had so far committed no illegal 
act. His Excellency dodged the suggestion, and, rising, 
was about to dismiss the conference, when, seeing that all 
was on the point of being won to the arbitrary course of 
the Pasha, I begged to offer my protest against any implied 



46 The Cretan InsuTrection of 1866. 

endorsement on my part of the proposed violence, as, until 
the assurance of immunit)'' had been given the Cretans, the 
peaceful expedients for assuring tranquillity had not been 
exhausted, or need for employment of force arisen. The 
Italian, Russian, and other consuls followed me in protest. 
The Pasha, disconcerted, sat down again, and the discussion 
was renewed. His Excellency hesitated, but Derche came 
to his relief with reasons for his not accorc'ing the immunity 
asked, saying that the Pasha had no right to compromise 
the intentions of his government. I replied that there was 
no question of Constantinople in the matter. The Cretans 
had confidence in the good-will of the Sultan, but not in 
his Excellency. Mr. Dickson was of opinion that the 
assurance was already implied in the Pasha's promise to 
support the petition with the Porte, and that, as the Assem- 
bly had committed no act to deserve persecution, it could 
not be supposed that they would be subjected to it. He 
therefore regarded the assurance as uncalled for. Six con- 
suls were against the Pasha, and two with him, but he took 
M. Derche's clue, and stood firm on the ground which 
that led him to, and so the conference ended. 

The Pasha had, however, failed in getting the moral 
support of the consular corps to the blow which he had 
intended to strike, and dared not send the troops out. He 
made a great blunder in calling the conference, as the con- 
suls had no right of intervention in the affair, but, like all 
over-cunning people, he caught himself in the trap he set 
for us. Having invited us not really to get our opinion, 
though he asked it, but to get our endorsement to his 
policy, he not only failed in this, but got a rebuiTf which 
made the experiment more hazardous than if he had said 
nothing. It had another bad effect for him in making 



Agitation. 47 

public the difference between his Excellency and the con- 
sular corps, and, as the latter is believed in Turkish coun- 
tries to be omnipotent, the popular feeling was immensely 
strengthened. * The irritation of the Pasha against the 
consular corps was unbounded, especially against Golucci 
and myself; indeed, I may say, peculiarly against myself 
as an old enemy and the spokesman of the opposition. 

Popular rumor magnified the difference, and myths as 
wild as those of the day of Minos made the tour of the 
island ; one which I saw in a Greek newspaper represented 
me as rising in the conference and declaring that, if the 
Pasha sent troops against the committee, I would go and 
put myself in front of them, and then we should see if the 
troops dared fire ! 

Meanwhile, all the friendly consuls united in urging the 
dissolution of the committee, and leaving the protection 
of individuals to the governments of the protecting powers, 
as the only means of averting what was seen to be a 
disastrous affair for the Cretans. That this was the true 
policy events have shown. The Cretans were not prepared 
to fight at that time, their friends on the Continent were 
no more prepared to assist them, and there was no supply 
of powder or arms in the island, nothing but old tu- 
feks, trophies of the war of 1821-30; the whole Turkish 
empire was at peace, and its available force ready to be 
poured on the island. The committee wavered and half- 
decided to disperse, they offered to put themselves as a 
committee into the hands of the Pasha, and await in his 

* The real reason for the insistence of the committee on the jsromise of im- 
munity was this: A daughter of one of the Pasha's council, \\Ssdme damnie^ a 
Cretan, by the name of Fetrides, finding- one day a list of persons designated for 
exile and the bagnio, in which was the name other lover, a young Cretan, stole 
the document and gave it to him. It contained the names of all the promi- 
nent chiefs of the petition movement, and many in the city who were only 
known for their liberal opinions. 



48 The Cretan Itisurrection of 1866. 

palace, or other quarters assigned them, the reply to the 
petition. This was refused, and the critical question hung 
by a hair. The influence of two persons prevailed over the 
committee against that of the consuls — one a priest called 
Tarthenius Kelaides, there being two Parthenii in the com- 
mittee; the other a Greek physician, temporarily in the 
island, known by the two names of Joannides and Pappa- 
dakis, long resident in England, an ultra- radical, and one 
of those who, ultra-demagogical in all their tendencies, are 
really honest in their intentions, and, wishing to do good, 
only succeed in doing the greater evil. In Crete, Dr. 
Joannides is generally considered as the immediate cause 
of the disastrous turn events took, and, as soon as the 
insurrection took active form, he abandoned it to its 
manifest destiny, and has never been heard of since in the 
island. It has always been a question if the Russian con- 
sul was sincere in his union with his colleagues of the 
majority, it being thought by some that in his hostility, 
mainly personal, to the French consul, he secretly took 
ground against the unconditional submission, that the 
Pasha and M. Derche might not carry the day. Be this 
as it may, I am confident that with regard to fighting he 
was in accord with his colleagues, and considered that 
actual insurrection should be avoided, and that the instruc- 
tions of the government were to this effect. But he was 
a man of very unsound judgment, and so passionate and 
personal in his way of seeing men and matters that I have 
always been of the opinion that, from mere personal feeling 
against Derche, he secretly strengthened Parthenius, over 
whom his influence was supreme, in his obstinacy, and 
so prevented the dispersal of the committee, which finally 
withdrew to the mountains to be secure from a coup de 



Agitation. 49 

main. Before doing so, however, they offered to allow two 
or more battalions of troops to guard them at Boutzou- 
naria, a proposition which the Pasha refused peremptoril)'-, 
knowing that, so long as the committee remained a con- 
stituted body, the Cretans would respect its authority, 
but that, if they dissolved and dispersed, they would lose 
all right to act, or control over the people. So ingrained 
is the Cretan's regard for the law of his ancient tradition 
that, while the whole population would have risen at 
once at the call of the committee as long as it was con- 
stituted, not one of the districts would have regarded 
an appeal made by the individual members when they 
had ceased to represent in due form the original Assembly. 
The question at issue was not, then, a trivial one, and in 
the reply to it lay the decision of peace or war. 



CHAPTER III. 

NABLE to provoke a direct collision with the 
committee, the Pasha had recourse to another 
expedient : he called in the entire Mussulman 
population of the island to the walled cities. Totally un- 
prepared for this unnecessary step, the unfortunate Moham- 
medans broke up their establishments of all kinds, and re- 
paired to the fortresses in a state of the greatest irritation 
at the sacrifice they had made and the privations they had 
had to endure. 

One complained that he had left his harvest uncut, and 
another had left his after it had been garnered; one told 
how he had been obliged, at a ruinous sacrifice, to dissolve 
partnership with a Christian neighbor with whom he had 
been engaged in silk-growing, the chief industry of the 
island, the Christian having no money to pay him for his 
share ; and another had thrown all his silk- worms to the 
fowls. The consuls, on becoming aware of this movement, 
protested to the Pasha against a step so likely to produce 
collisions between the two religions ; on which the Pasha 
sent counter-orders to his co-religionists to remain at home. 
The bearers of these orders met the Mussulmans on the 
roads, and succeeded in halting several bodies of them, 
while others, without provisions or protection from the 
weather, insisted on entering the cities. This confusion 
and vacillation increased the suffering and irritation of the 
people, and finally brought about the effect desired by the 
Pasha-^a feeling of hostility against the Christians. A 



Days of Terror. 51 

large body of these refugees encamped before the gates of 
Canea, and menaced the Pasha with insurrection if they 
were not permitted to enter. The Pasha yielded, threw 
open the gates, and again sent secret messengers to invite 
the fugitives eji route to come into the city. 

Candia, Canea, and Retimo were speedily filled to over- 
flowing by an exasperated mob of fanatics, whose menaces 
against the Christian population were neither measured nor 
secret. The Christians remembered past insurrections, and 
most of them had been witnesses of the scenes of 1858, 
when the armed Mussulmans had dragged the body of a 
Christian they had killed through the streets of Canea, and 
before the consulates, firing their pistols at the doors of the 
most obnoxious, and were only prevented from wholesale 
massacre by European men-of-war in the port. The entry 
of the Mohammedans was the signal for a panic with the 
Christians, and a frantic exodus commenced. The Lloyd 
steamers were overcrowded every trip ; several Greek 
steamers came over, and caiques, and sailing-boats even, 
were freighted full, and sailed for Milos, Cerigotto, and 
other islands. In Candia, unrestrained by the presence 
of European representatives, the Mussulmans entered the \ 
houses of the Christians by force, and obliged the latter to ■ 
make room for them; the same took place in Retimo; 
while in Selinos the whole Christian population took to the 
mountains. Meanwhile, the Pasha had informed his gov- 
ernment that insurrection was imminent, and demanded 
reinforcements of troops. These, beginning to arrive, ex- 
hilarated the Mussulman population, who now began to 
prepare for hostilities, and their priests began openly to 
preach a crusade against Christianity. A Dervish, who 
arrived with a battalion in which he served as chaplain, 



52 The Cretan Insttrrection of 1866. 

landed with a green banner, spread his carpet on the ma- 
rina in front of the custom-house, and, after his prayer, 
began to preach the holy war and the extermination .ot 
Christianity, declaring that " the cross must no longer stand, 
but be put in the dust." The rabble of porters and boat- 
men, mainly Arabs, Syrians, and other foreign Mussul- 
mans, and intensely fanatical, were roused to the highest 
enthusiasm, and shouted " Amin ! amin !" to his exhorta- 
tions, when he continued his itineracy of the city. Infor- 
mation of the fact being brought to me, I took a witness of 
the Dervish's conduct, and remonstrated at once with the 
general-in-chief, Osman Pasha, who ordered the Dervish 
on board a frigate and sent him to Candia, where was 
no European to report liis proceedings. 

The emigration of Christians to Greece continued until 
about 12,000 souls left the island, and at all points of con- 
tact mutual irritation of Christian and Mohammedan in- 
creased. The hostility of the Mussulmans to the consuls 
who opposed the Pasha became especially virulent, and we 
were, openly and continually threatened with being the first 
victims of the new crusade. 

\ By this time it became evident to all in the island that 
the Pasha was laboring to provoke a collision, and that M. 
Derche was doing his best to assist him, but neither side 
seemed inclined to take the first step in open hostilities — 
the committee because they did not desire them, and the 
Pasha because he desired to avoid the responsibility of 
them.' ; The first blood shed was of Christian by Christian, 
and furnishes so good an illustration of Cretan manners 
that it seems worth detailing. During the exchange of 
words which had taken place between the Pasha and the 
Assembly, a messenger of the former, a Cretan Christian, 



Days of Terror. 53 

was insulted by one of the committee's people, spit on, and 
bitterly reproached for his unpatriotic subserviency. His 
son shortly after assassinated the insulter. Both were Spha> 
kiotes, a race with whom blood-vengeance is a religious 
obligation. It was supposed that the assassination was in- 
stigated by the Pasha as the means of bringing on hostili- 
ties; and, when the relatives of the murdered man went to 
execute justice on the murderer, they found the house forti- 
fied, and after a short skirmish, during which a child of the 
murderer was killed by a ball fired through the door, the 
attacking party retired to wait a more convenient opportu- 
nity, and the Pasha sent a battalion of troops to the locaHty 
to protect the murderer's house, making no pretence what- 
ever of bringing him to judgment. The move very nearly 
succeeded in bringing on hostihties, a captain of one of the 
adjoining villages, with his men, going at once to drive out 
the intruding Turks. The committee sent a body of picked 
men to disarm the villagers, in which they succeeded by 
stratagem, and so averted a collision. 

Amongst the troops which arrived were 8,000 Egyptians, 
and with them the general-in-chief of the Egyptian army, 
Schahin Pasha, an accomplished diplomat and adminis- 
trator of the Eastern type, munificent in gifts and promises, 
and magnificent in ceremonies and negotiations. He came 
in pursuance of a grand plan, concocted at Constantinople 
between the Marquis de Moustier, the Turkish and Egyp- 
tian governments, which was to coax or hire the Cretan 
chiefs into appealing to the Viceroy for protection, v/hen, 
on the application of the plebiscite, the island was to be 
transferred to Egypt, on the payment by the Viceroy to the 
Sultan of a certain consideration, said to be ;;^4oo,ooo 
down, and ^80,000 per annum tribute. De Moustier was 



54 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

to have received ^100,000 as payment for his services in 
managing the affair, and in due course of time, it was whis- 
pered, the Bay of Suda, having been duly fortified by the 
Egyptians and made a naval station, was to have been 
transferred tale quale to France. Schahin, on arriving, 
placed himself in relations with the French consul, and 
under his advice concocted the plan of operations. It was 
a fatal mistake, and led to the ruin of the whole intrigue. 
Derche could comprehend but two kinds of men — those 
who are bought and those who buy them. He himself 
was of the former class; Schahin was a prince in the 
latter. Derche's opinion of the Cretans was that any could 
be bought or frightened into their project, and Schahin, 
accepting Derche's estimate, bid munificently for the votes 
of the Cretan chiefs, made presents to the churches, 
starding professions of liberality towards the Christians, 
and comported himself in the most approved style of 
Eastern potentates towards the consuls and all other in- 
fluential personages. -'\- 

Having prepared, as he supposed, a favorable reputation 
with the Cretan committee-men, he set out for the Apoko- 
fona, the rocky region which contains the passes to Sphakia, 
where the committee had moved its headquarters. There 
he commenced direct operations by distributing large sums 
of money amongst the influential Cretans, who, nothing 
loath, accepted the money, making no promises. At this 
juncture, the Governor-General, getting wind of Schahin's 
plans, insisted on attending him during his interviews with 
the committee, and joined him in the Apokorona. He 
had a plan of his own, Avith which that of Schahin mili- 
tated, and for which he had been for several years pre- 
paring. This was, having prepared and precipitated the 



Days of Terror. 55 

insurrection, and crushed it, as he confidently anticipated 
doing between bribery and force, to draw up a petition for 
signature by the Cretans, praying that the island might be 
made a principality, with Ismael as prince. He therefore 
did all in his power to prevent an understanding between 
Schahin and the committee. Many days passed thus in 
intrigues and counter-intrigues, until Ismael was struck 
down by a dangerous fever, and was brought back to 
Canea scarcely alive, leaving the field open to Schahin, 
who thereupon made a rendezvous with the committee, 
but, with Egyptian faith, arranged a battalion of troops so 
as to catch them as they came to keep it. The wily moun- 
taineers detected the trap, and broke off all communica- 
tions, so that Schahin was obliged to return to Canea, 
having gained nothing, and cursing the Cretans as a hard- 
headed, impracticable set of villains. He left, however, 
4,000 troops at Vrysis, an important strategical point in 
the Apokorona, menacing the approaches to Sphakia and 
the headquarters of the committee, and holding the most 
direct communication between the eastern and western 
parts of the island. 

Having learned the worthlessness of M. Derche as a 
means of influencing the Cretans, he had begun to enquire 
amongst the islanders whose influence would best be em- 
ployed to serve his purposes, and was referred to the Rus- 
sian consul and myself; I presume primarily to myself, from 
the fact that all the new proposals and negotiations were 
directed at me, and, after many idle compliments and some 
magnificent entertainments, his Excellency condescended 
to open his plans with apparent frankness to me, and 
proposed to me in so many words to pay me any sum I 
sliould name if I could bring to bear the influence neces- 



56 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

sary to secure the success of the Egyptian scheme. I took 
his propositions into consideration, and immediately com- 
municated them to our minister at Constantinople, by 
whom they were, I believe, laid before Lord Lyons, who, 
I presume, quashed the matter, as it never was heard of 
more in the island. W^ 

Meanwhile, the agitation in the island, and the hostility 
between the Mussulman and Christian population, were 
rapidly increasing. One of the principal Cretan Moham- 
medans, notorious for his activity and cruelty in the Avar of 
1821-30, and who served the troops at Vrysis as guide and 
interpreter, was killed under the following circumstances : 
Having entered a cafe in one of the Christian villages near 
Vrysis, he was boastingly narrating his former feats, 
amongst which was the murder of a white Christian family 
of eleven persons, whom he found at supper in their own 
house unarmed, and, after having been welcomed by them, 
he closed the doors, and killed the whole on the spot. He 
continued boasting of what he would do in the coming 
war in the same vein, and on leaving the cafe was waylaid 
by a relative of the murdered family, and shot dead. 

This was the first Mussulman blood, and the body was 
carried with great pomp to Can6a, and lay in state outside 
the gates, the remonstrances of the consuls preventing it 
from being carried through the city according to the inten- 
tion of the relatives. The family of the new victim being 
large and influential, it gathered in numbers outside the 
gate, blocking it up temporarily, while the women of the 
connection went e?i masse to the palace of the Pasha to 
demand vengeance on the murderers. The Mussulman 
population became intensely exasperated, and proposed 
retaliating on the Christians in general, beginning with the 



Days of Terror. 57 

consuls. The whole consular body united in pressure on 
the Pasha to induce him to repress the agitation, and suc- 
ceeded so far that no immediate outbreak occurred. The 
body was buried without worse demonstrations than in- 
sults and menaces to all Christians, whoever and wherever, 
and the crowd dispersed by order of the Pasha. 

But though no actual violence occurred, the state of 
excitement was intense, and it became evident that, in 
spite ot all the influence of the consular body, the least 
untoward incident might precipitate a general massacre of 
the Christians in the cities. The exodus by sea continued, 
and the houses of the Russian, Italian, and Swedish con- 
suls, and my own, at Khalepa, were besieged by terror- 
stricken crowds of Christians without the means of emi- 
grating to Greece, and bringing their household goods to 
be stored under the protection of the flags. In the ItaHan 
consulate alone were over 150, and several cabins clustered 
round my door were filled with women and children, 
while hundreds more, abandoning everything, took to the 
mountains. 

The Mussulmans were anxious for the fighting to begin. 
The Governor had distributed rifles and ammunition ad libi- 
tum to his Cretan co-religionaries. The Russian and Italian 
consuls and myself urged at Constantinople concessions and 
the removal of the Governor, and all except the English 
and Frencli begged for the despatch of a man-of-war for 
the protection of European residents. M. Derche and Mr. 
Dickson, considering that the presence of any European 
flag would be an encouragement to the insurrection, refused 
to unite in this request. 

Several times the gates of the city had been closed to 
prevent a sortie of the Mussulmans in the city to attack 



58 The Cretan Insttrrection of 1866. 

the consulates. We doubled the number of our cavasses, 
got revolvers and rifles in order, prepared mattresses for 
barricading the houses, and organized a strong patrol 
from the Cretans who had taken refuge in the consulates, 
to watch the roads by which the Turks would come from 
Canea. 

At this juncture news arrived of the appointment of the 
former Governor-General of the island, Mustapha Kiritli 
Pasha, to supersede Ismael. The Imperial Commissioner, 
for this was the title by which he was to be known, had 
great personal influence over the Cretans of both religions, 
and, if he had come immediately on his appointment, would 
probably have succeeded in averting the insurrection. I 
find in my correspondence of this date, August 28, 1866 : 
" As to the insurrection itself, it waits to draw first blood. 
The Greeks to the number of thirty to thirty-five thousand 
[an enormously exaggerated estimate, I afterward found] 
are concentrated in the mountains, and determined to fight 
it out to the bitter end. The delays of diplomacy to right 
a wrong that was too patent even for your [English] consul 
to blind himself to, have permitted a trouble to grow that 
might have been rooted up with reasonable concessions on 
the part of the government, and now nothing but death 
and desolation will bring back Crete to Turkish rule. They 
will now insist on independence where they only demand- 
ed common justice. We shall doubtless have another san- 
guinary, desperate struggle, and a depopulated island, unless 
Europe intervenes to right the wrong it did in 1830." 

The troops in the Apokorona were face to face with the 
Cretans armed to protect the committee, and that step for- 
ward would make a collision certain. The irregulars, proud 
of their new rifles, were firing in every direction all over 



Days of Terror. 59 

the country. One heard rifle-balls whistling past, falling 
on the roofs and everywhere continually. Still no Euro- 
pean ships. By every post we pleaded with our ministers 
at Constantinople for protection. The anxiety and excite- 
ment became almost unendurable. The whole community 
seemed to be in a state of tension and apprehension that 
approached madness. I found myself going continually and 
unconsciously to my balcony, telescope in hand, although 
ten minutes before I failed to discover an object in the 
range of vision. I grew, like the genius of the Arabian 
tale in his vase of lead, ready to curse the tardy deliverer 
that he tarried so long. The sight of a steamer on the ho- 
rizon produced a loathing, as one after another we had 
watched them approach only to see the accursed crescent 
increase on our vision. One night a party of Mussulmans, 
passing through the suburb in which we resided,- in frolic 
fired several pistol-shots, yelling " Death to the Christians !" 
In a few minutes, all that remained of Christianity in the 
quarter outside the gates of the consulates were rushing in 
a state of uncontrollable panic to beg admission. My ca- 
vasses were obdurate and indifferent, being Mussulmans, 
and refused to open, and, while I lay listening for indica- 
tions of further and serious disturbance, my wife had de- 
scended, thrown the doors open, admitting the crowd of 
women and children, who passed the rest of the night seat- 
ed on the floor of the consulate. None of us left our walls 
needlessly, and then only with an armed guard. My 
children for weeks did not pass the threshold, and, when 
business called either of us, whom the Cretans called the 
friendly consuls, to the palace of the Governor-General, we 
were greeted passing through the streets with unmistakable 
scowls and menaces. The sentinel at the city-gate as I 



6o^ The Cretan Insurrectio7t of 1866. 

passed one day, instead of presenting arms, as etiquette re- 
quires to a consular officer, saluted me as an infidel dog, 
accompanying the epithet with a menace and grimace 
comprehensible even to one who understood not a word 
of Turkish. I begged my wife at last to take the children 
and go to Syra, where they would be in security, but she 
resolutely refused, believing that her departure would be 
the signal for the last panic among the Christian women, 
who depended on our protection. Only they who know 
the extent and bitterness of Mussulman fanaticism caa 
estimate the danger or anxiety of those few weeks. 



I 




CHAPTER IV. 

HE first relief was the flying visit of Admiral 
Lord Clarence Paget, in the Psyche despatch- 
boat, direct from Constantinople en route for 
Malta, to inform us that the Arethusa had been or- 
dered to Crete. This was a reprieve of a few days, 
and was followed by complete freedom from anxiety 
on the arrival of the Arethusa, the sound of whose 
saluting guns at Suda Bay (the port of Canea for large 
ships) produced an emotion which was like waking from a 
long nightmare. We all went to Suda to pay our official 
and personal visits, which the officers returned, and blue- 
jackets swarming in the town, and racing over the plain of 
Canea like mad fox-hunters, hilarious, indifferent to yata- 
ghan or bullet, as if they were anything but Giaours, assured 
both Turk and Christian that at least the Europeans must 
be respected. We took down our barricades, and again 
moved about freely ; yet the feeling was so strong amongst 
the Mussulmans that the English were on their side that 
the native Christians experienced no benefit from the cause 
which brought us comparative relief. We attended ser- 
vice the Sunday subsequent to the arrival of the Arethusa 
on board, and, lunching with Captain McDonald, were call- 
ed from the table to see the stars and stripes rounding the 
point and entering the bay. They floated from the gaff 
of the corvette Ticouderoga, whose commandant, being at 
Trieste, came for old friendship's sake to look after us on 



62 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

getting the first news of the insurrection. Her stay for a 
few days Avas a demonstration of force which, so far as I 
was concerned, left a most healthy impression as to my 
being supported by the United States Government, the more 
that the Ticonderoga sailed from Suda direct for Constan- 
tinople (according to her commander's original intention), 
a course which produced a general impression in Crete 
that. she had gone to support my view on the question. 
Nothing could exceed in friendliness and cordiaHty the 
manner in which the commander. Commodore Steedman, 
and his officers supported me in my difficult position, and 
identified the national dignity with the respect due to the 
humblest of its representatives. The Arethusa, a few days 
after her arrival, was succeeded by H. B. M.'s gunboat 
Wizard, which during several subsequent months was our 
only and sufficient protector. Her humane and gallant 
young commander, Murray, will ever be remembered with 
gratitude and honor by every European resident in Crete 
during the insurrection. He placed us all under obligations 
of many kinds which a passing notice can only faintly re- 
cognize. 

Meanwhile, the dissension between the Governor-General 
and the Egyptian Pasha increased in violence, until any- 
thing like co-operation became impossible, the policy of 
the latter being clearly pacific with a show of force. He 
wished to avoid a collision as long as possible, hoping 
still to conciliate Cretan public opinion, while Ismael was 
determined to do everything in his power to bring about 
hostilities. The Egyptian therefore threw himself for sup- 
port on the consular body, from whom he received that 
degree of support which their instructions and personal 
sympathies rendered possible, as, with the exception of M. 



Preliminaries of War. 63 

Derclie, all the members of the corps were anxious to pre- 
vent bloodshed. 

The committee sent to the Italian and Russian consuls 
and myself urgent entreaties that we would persuade the 
Egyptians to withdraw from Vrysis, a position which pro- 
voked attack by the Cretans, as, if maintained by the troops, 
it prevented all strategical movements by the insurrection- 
ary forces. This request we all urged on the attention of 
Schahin, and he energetically demanded from the Governor- 
General permission to withdraw the menaced battalions. 
The effective reply of the Governor was to withdraw all 
the Turkish supports, and leave Schahin to his own re- 
sources, compelling him to devote two of his four batta- 
lions remaining to keeping open the communications of 
Vrysis with the sea-shore. While this family quarrel para- 
lyzed the government at Canea, the Mussulmans in Seli- 
nos, a fortress on the south side of the island, w^ere shut in by 
strong guards of Christians posted on the hills round about, 
and were even more impatient than at Canea because more 
inconvenienced, and finally made a sortie on one of the 
adjoining Christian villages. They were fruitlessly warned 
back, and, persisting, were fired upon, and several killed 
and wounded. Ismael immediately called a council of 
war, and made a requisition on Schahin for a battalion of 
Egyptians to go with another of Turks to the relief of the 
Seliniotes. Schahin sent for me at once to advise him on 
the matter, I recommended him strongly not to obey the 
requisition, as the breach of -the peace having taken place 
between the indigenes of the two religions justified him 
in assuming that hostilities did not e-xist, and, according to 
his instructions, that he was under no circumstances to be 
drawn into an offensive movement. He therefore return- 



04 The Cretan Insitrfection of 1866. 

ed answer that, his battahons at Vr)^sis being menaced, 
and this affair being only a colHsion between Cretans of 
the two rehgions, he was not justified in withdrawing any 
of his remaining troops from a position wliere they might 
be needed to secure the safety of those already compro- 
mised,, and declined to obey the requisition. The expedi- 
tion was therefore abandoned, though the steamers were 
lying in the roadstead with steam up ready to transport 
the troops. At the same time, news arrived from Vrysis 
that the Cretans had concentrated at the passes, and for- 
bade the sending of any more supplies to the Egyptian camp, 
under penalty of attack. This produced another request 
from Schahin to the Russian consul and myself to urge 
the committee to take no such offensive step, he promising 
at the same time not to make common cause with the 
Turkish troops, even should they be attacked, so long as 
the Egyptian troops were not molested in any way. 

On the heels of this came news of another sortie from 
Selinos of the Mussulmans, which had been repulsed, as 
well as another of the regular troops made in support of 
them. The receipt of this news brought excitement in 
Canea to its culmination, and irritation toward the in- 
surgents (for such they had substantially become) began to 
find expression in acts of violence to unoffending Chris- 
tians in and about the city. A Christian who kept horses 
for hire at the gates of the city, was attacked and beaten 
and stabbed to death ; immediately after, another, in the 
city, met the same fate; and ftie authorities taking no notice 
whatever of these murders, the fanatics, emboldened and 
having tasted blood, murdered, pillaged, and robbed in 
every direction. 

The panic which ensued amongst the few remaining 



Ultima Ratio. 65 

Christians was indescribable. Many started on foot, alone 
or in small parties, for the mountains, but, having been en- 
tirely disarmed, most of them were cut off and murdered 
on the way. Others, coming to the city in ignorance of 
these events, were met and shot down on the roads. No 
one was allowed to carry arms to defend himself, nor was 
any investigation made into these matters. The state of 
the country for the next few days defies description. 
Gunshots were heard in every direction, and the more 
friendly of the Mussulman peasantry brought news of 
single bodies here, and groups there, by the roadside, in 
houses, and in chapels, where they had taken refuge. No 
one dared go out to investigate the truth of most of these 
reports, but the secretary of the Greek consul made an 
excursion, accom.panied by several cavasses, as far as Ga- 
latas, a village of the plain, three miles from Canea, and 
counted seven dead bodies naked by the way. By the 
sea-side, between my house and the city, were the slaugh- 
ter-houses where all the cattle and sheep for the use of 
the city and army were butchered. Here were ordinarily 
immense flocks of ravens, accustomed to batten without 
disturbance on the offal thrown out on the shore. Withiii 
two or three days the whole of those birds deserted the 
shore, where they did not reappear for weeks, but were to 
be seen in small flocks hovering amongst the olive-groves 
of the plain. 

During this state of things, extreme hostilities broke out 
at several points of the island. The messengers we had sent 
to the committee to urge a truce with the Egyptians had 
not been permitted to pass the lines, or for some other 
reason failed in reaching their destination, so that our mes- 
sage was never received by the committee, who, in pursu- 



66 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

ance of their previous resolution, summoned the Egyp- 
tians peremptorily to leave the Apokorona or take the con- 
sequences, and, the refusal being equally peremptory, the 
committee ordered their forces to close at once upon the 
troops, cut off access to the springs, and close the passage 
to all relief. The unfortunate Egyptians, disastrously re- 
pulsed in an attempt to recover the springs of water from 
which they had their daily supply, were driven within their 
entrenched camp and closely blockaded. The battaUons 
ordered to reopen the communications, being also repulsed 
in their attack in the passes, and tliose in camp having ex- 
hausted all their ammunition^ food, and water, were com- 
pelled to surrender at discretion. The Cretans permitted 
them to march out with their arms and all of their equip- 
ments they could carry, and gave them forty-eight hours 
to send mules without escort to carry off the remainder. 
No parole even was exacted not to bear arms in future. 

Simultaneously with this affair, the Turkish troops at 
Selinos, having made a sortie in force on the Christians 
who beleaguered them, were drawn into the defiles of the 
mountains, and were then attacked, beaten, and driven 
into the mountain fortress of Candanos, where they were 
blockaded closely. These feats of arms naturally elated 
the Cretans, and exasperated the Turks correspondingly. 
The Governor-General lost all self-possession, and abandon- 
ed the reins of government to his subordinates. Confusion 
became anarchy, and, to increase the dismay, the few re- 
maining Christians in the cities were forbidden to leave 
the island. The Egyptians, mortified by their defeat, as- 
sailed the Christians in the villages nearest their new en 
campment in the most brutal and barbarous manner. 

The presence of the Wizard in the port alone prevented 



Mtistapha Kiritli Pasha. 67 

a general massacre of the Christians in Canea. Assem- 
bhes of the Mussuhiian Cretans were held in their quarter 
of the city, with the avowed i:)urpose of going out to 
kill the Christians in the suburbs, beginning with the con- 
suls. The military authorities had the presence of mind 
to close the gates to all Christians entering or Mussiilmans 
leaving the town. The whole Christian population of the 
island seemed in arms, and considerable parties of them 
made raids within sight of the walls of the city, carrying 
off as prisoners a number of Mussulmans who were en- 
gaged in getting in the vintage. 

At the moment when it seemed impossible that con- 
fusion should not end in universal . anarchy and massacre, 
the Imperial Commissioner arrived. Mustapha Kiridi Pasha 
had, by an impartial and energetic, if barbarous, adminis- 
tration of the affairs of the island, secured the respect and 
even esteem of the Christians, while his merciless repres- 
sion of previous insurrections had inspired the strongest 
belief in his military capacity. As he entered the town, a 
Christian was shot down in the road behind him, one of 
the few who, influenced by the old regard for the Pasha, 
ventured to follow in his train ; and, at the same moment, 
another was stabbed to death within a few hundred yards — 
a well-known employee of one of the principal Turkish beys, 
whose position had hitherto been his protection. The installa- 
tion of Mustapha checked these disorders, and, investigation 
being ordered into them, the Governor-General, whose in- 
capacity and malevolence became apparent, was peremptori- 
ly ordered to leave for Constantinople, not even being allowed 
time to pack his household furniture. The Commissioner at 
once commenced organizing and preparing expeditions to 
attack the Christians and relieve the troops cooped up at 



68 The Cretan Insii,rrection of 1866. 

Candanos. The Cretan Mohammedans, to the number of 
5,000, were regularly enrolled as volunteers. Strict orders 
were given in every direction for the protection of unarmed 
individuals, and in all the villages within the power of the 
government forces the option was given to the inhabitants 
of inscribing themselves as friends of the government and 
taking written protection — a course which would expose 
them to the hostility of the insurgent forces — or of joining 
their co-religionists in the mountains. A proclamation was 
issued, directed to the committee, in which the insurgents 
were summoned instantly to submit and give up their arms. 
No concessions were made, none even promised; the 
purport of the firman was, " Submit, be good children, and 
you shall see what you shall see !" As was to be expected, 
the committee, flushed by its recent successes and encou- 
raged by the promise of succor from Greece, where com- 
mittees had been formed at the first news of hostilities 
having commenced, rejected the proclamation contemp- 
tuously, and issued a counter-proclamation, which was 
forwarded to all the consuls and to the ministers at Con- 
stantinople. 

As I shall have, in the course of this history, to make 
serious question of the conduct of the Greek government, 
I shall do it the justice to say that, to the best of my 
information, it had up to this time utterly discouraged the 
insurrection as injudicious and ill-timed. But the affair of 
Vrysis had so great an effect on public opinion in Greece 
that the government was obliged to make concessions to it. 

Mustapha found the Egyptian army diminished and 
utterly demoralized by defeat. About 12,000 Turkish troops 
Nvere in the island, indifferently equipped and in a poor 
state of discipline ; added to these, he had his 5,000 



Mustapha Kiritli Pcuha. 69 

irregulars and a few hundred Albanians, From these he 
organized an army of about 10,000 men, with whom he 
marched to the relief of Candanos. The direct passes were 
?dl held by the Cretans in such strength that the Turks were 
unable to force their way, and they were obliged, there- 
fore, to make a long detour through the western part of 
the island, constantly harassed by parties of the insurgents, 
who held all the advantageous positions on the route. 

The expedition succeeded in relieving Candanos without 
a fight, the Cretans retiring before the overpowering forces 
of the Commissioner, not too soon for the besieged, who 
were at the verge of starvation before relief arrived. The 
siege was marked by the usual atrocities of those religious 
barbarian conflicts. An incident, related to me by a Chris- 
tian Cretan who assisted at the siege, will suffice to show 
the animus by which they were already possessed. Some 
of the besieged Cretans, recognizing a brother of a prisoner 
in their possession amongst the besiegers, killed the pri- 
soner, and, cutting him up as the butchers cut meat, hung 
the members above the parapet, calling to the besiegers 
that they had meat yet. The besiegers retaliated by treat- 
ing half-a-dozen prisoners in the same way, aid calling to 
the besiegers that, if they wanted more, they might come 
and get it.* 

The Commissioner withdrew immediately, taking in his 
escort all the Mussulman families who had been blockaded 
m Selinos and Candanos, together with those of some neigh- 
boring villages vv^ho had not hitherto been molested by the 
Christians, the insurrectionary committee having still hopes 

* The position of Candanos, although impregnable to direct assault, waa 
commanded on all sides by hills within speaking distance, but which the 

Cretans had neitlier avtillerj' nor rifles to take advantage of. 



70 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

of conciliating the opposition of their Mussuhnan com- 
patriots, and, in pursuance of this poUcy, having given 
orders to do everything possible to induce the Mussulmans 
to make common cause with the Christians. These, how- 
ever, augmented the train of the Commissioner with theii 
families and flocks, and the return of the army so encum 
bered was slow and dangerous, the Christians following 
and harassing the flanks, showing resistance in front at all 
difficult passes, and cutting off stragglers; the troops, in 
retaliation, destroying all villages on the road of return as 
they had on that of going. I had been able to watch from 
my balcony the departure of the troops, and follow their 
line of march by the smoke of the burning villages; and 
after two weeks' absence, during the latter part of which 
no communications had been kept up between the army 
and the capital, the wildest panic prevailing at headquar- 
ters, where rumors were generally believed to the effect 
that the whole army had been blockaded, I was able, 
from the same point, to perceive the return of the troops 
by the same ominous indications. In returning by a 
shorter route than that followed in going, the army had 
to pass by a difficult ravine, called Kakopetra, where the 
Christians made a determined attack and attempt to block 
the road, in which they would certainly have succeeded 
had they possessed modern firearms, but as they were 
armed mostly with the tufeks of their grandfathers, 01 
pistols of the war of Greek independence, an attack on 
equal terms was impossible. The Pasha, by throwing out 
his irregulars on both sides to keep back the insurgents, 
and pressing down the road, with the imperial troops and 
Egyptian regulars escorting the families and flocks, 
succeeded in forcing his way through, though with serious 



Miistapha Kiritli Pasha. 71 

loss. A European surgeon attached to the government 
hospital at Canea assured me that the killed amounted to 
120 and the wounded to upwards of 800, the wounds being 
mostly slight from spent balls apparently fired from pistols. 
In fact, if the Cretans had been well armed and provided 
with good ammunition, the campaign would probably 
have ended there and then, and Kakopetra become as 
famous as Askypho in the great insurrection, when the 
same Mustapha, in 1823, was blockaded, and his army 
almost exterminated, himself, with his immediate followers, 
only escaping by scattering the contents of the military 
treasury on the road. 

The successful return of the army to Canea was the 
signal of the most enthusiastic rejoicings on the part of the 
Mussulman population of Canea, who, with the extrava- 
gance of a semi-barbaric people, had passed the last few 
days in the wildest frenzy of fear and irritation. 




CHAPTER V. 

|HE rescue happily concluded, the Pasha organized 
a movement against Lakus, Theriso, Keramia, 
strong points where the Christians had assem- 
bled in considerable numbers and from Avhence they 
might harry the plains of Canea, carrying off flocks 
and occasionally prisoners. This expedition consisted 
of twelve thousand men. While the organization was 
going on, the Christians came down to the number of 
several hundred, and took possession of the direct road 
to Theriso, and attacked the block-house on the hill 
of Malaxa overlooking the plain, and three miles from 
Canea. The attack on the block-house necessarily 
failed from the want of artillery, and the Commission- 
er succeeded in reinforcing the garrison strongly after a 
sharp repulse in which the reinforcements were driven 
back nearly to the plain country, as I myself was able to 
perceive, watching the skirmish through a telescope. The 
day after, two battalions were ordered to clear the road to 
Theriso, held by the insurgents, and were assisted by a 
battery of artillery, taking the Cretans in flank from the 
block-house of Malaxa, firing across an impassable ra- 
vine. The attack lasted the whole afternoon, and, watch- 
ing the affair through my glass, I could perceive that 
neither the direct nor the flank movement produced the 
least impression on the insurgents, who maintained their 
position till nightfall, when the troops were withdrawn to 
the plain. The next day the attack was renewed with 
five thousand men and a considerable ibrce of irregulars. 



Getting to Work. 73 

Tlie Cretans fell back from their position of the day be- 
fore to the ridges and ravines which cut up the plateau of 
Keramia, where they received the attack of the troops, and, 
always retreating but contesting every inequality of ground, 
they fell back to the precipitous spurs of the White or Spha • 1 
kian Mountains on the further side of the plain, where they 
made good their position during the remainder of the day. 
The losses on either side we were never able to ascertain, 
though the Cretans admitted a loss of seven killed and thirty 
or forty wounded, among the former being a son of Ma- 
nosouyanaki, the chief captain of the district, who command- 
ed the defence. The troops returned at night, having oc- 
cupied the whole day in making an advance of about three 
miles, but the official report the next day declared that the 
movement had been perfecdy successful, without the loss 
of a man killed or wounded. The expedition against La- 
kus, proceeding westward, turned that position, which the 
Cretans abandoned without contest, and retreated across 
the almost impassable ravine which separates the hill of 
Lakus from the central chain of mountains, to Zurba, a 
village situated on a bold bastion, which could only be at- 
tacked successfully from the higher mountains, and which 
they had fortified in a rude manner as depot and hospital. 
The number of Cretans at Zurba amounted to six hun- 
dred, the attacking force as many thousand, v/ith two bat- 
teries of artillery ; but after two days' bombardment, during 
part of which time I counted (Zurba being only nine 
miles in a straight line from my house) thirty shots per 
minute, and three assaults, the Turks were obliged to aban- 
don the attack and move on to Theriso. This village, an 
ancient stronghold of Crete, which, with the ravine leading 
to it, has been the scene of many disasters to the Turkish 



74 ^^'^ Creta?z Insurrection of 1866. 

troops in the different insurrections, is situated in a valley 
surrounded on all sides but one by abrupt hills, and could 
easily have been held by five hundred well- disciplined and 
resolute men against the whole Turkish army. The Cre- 
tans lacked not resolution, but unfortunately for their dis- 
cipline the news arrived at this moment that the Panhelle- 
nion blockade-runner had landed her first cargo of arms 
and supplies on the north side of the island, on learning 
which nearly the whole force stationed for the protection 
of Theriso went to assist in the debarkation of the cargo. 
Mustapha took this moment for the attack on Theriso, 
which he occupied without opposition, and evacuated with 
equal celerity on receiving warning of the return of the 
Cretans, armed with the rifles of the Greek national guard 
and reinforced by a body of Hellenic volunteers. The Cre- 
tans, following their usual policy, however, gathered on his 
flanks and harassed his retreat, for it virtually became 
such, until he reached the positions attained in the previous 
attack by Keramia, where he encamped to reorganize the 
movement onward through the Rhizo* against the Apo- 
korona. 

In a campaign of seven days, he had destroyed nearly 
a score of villages, most of them undefended ; had utterly 
destroyed all hope of compromise or conciliation; and, 
though he had penetrated the strongest outposts of the in- 
surgents, had attained no other result than the temporary 
possession of the position of Lakus, the village being a 
mass of ruins, as a base of operations in case of a new at- 
tack on Theriso or an expedition against Omalo, amid the 



♦The Rhijo or " root" of the mountains is the hilly district intervening be- 
tween the higher mountaJns and the plains whicli border the sea. Malaxa is 
the " root " nearest the sea. 



Getting to Work. 75 

western peaks of the White Mountains. He had anticipated 
great moral effects from his mountain artillery, but the Cre- 
tans learned to despise it. With their old-fashioned fire- 
arms, they had managed to harass the Turkish troops to such 
an extent that they looked to the days when they should 
fight with rifles with enthusiasm and resolution. Then eve- 
ry burned village left an additional number of men who, 
having lost all their property, had no interest in peace ; so 
that every advantage he had gained had only increased ) 
the force opposed to him. I urged this consideration as 
strongly as possible on the Commissioner in several visits, 
which was all the better reason in his mind to make him 
insist on his policy. He had expected that his name 
would induce immediate submission, or, at least, that in a 
single battle he would make so decided an impression that 
the favorable terms he was then prepared to offer would 
be at once accepted, but, till the military power of the Cre- 
tans was completely broken, the Porte was determined to 
make no concessions of any kind. The insurgents, on the 
other hand, were already under the influence of Hellenic en- 
thusiasts, and receiving munitions of all kinds by the block- 
ade-runners, and the drift of their counsels was toward war. 
It was clear now that the Porte had made a most disastrous 
blunder, in fact an unbroken series of blundersin all its mea- 
sures. It should not have entertained the project of transfer- 
ence in the beginning ; in the second place, having decided 
on the transfer, it should have carried it out logically, and not 
by a bastard popular vote enforced by the presence of an 
Egyptian army ; and finally, having decided to send the Com- 
missioner, it should have sent him at once, instead of keep- 
ing him and the answer to the petition waiting for three 
months. Its whole course was irritating and unjust. It had 



76 The Cretan Insiirrectmi of 1866. 

had no excuse for the employment of force, and was warn- 
ed by the consular corps, without exception, of the previ- 
ous dishonest, tyrannical, and impolitic conduct of Ismael 
Pasha. If it had a consistent policy in the whole matter, it 
could only have been to provoke an insurrection in Crete 
when all the other provinces were unable to rise, and so 
disarm by a crushing suppression the enemy most dreaded 
of. all its subject provinces. 
A The finale of the Theriso campaign was m.arked by the 
appearance of the great Dens ex machinA of the insurrec- 
tion, the Russian frigate Grajid Admiral^ and the com- 
mencement of the real moral intervention of Russia in 
the already complicated affair. The Russian commander, 
Boutakofif, was too fit a selection for the r61e which events 
compelled (or permitted) him to play to have been inten- 
tionally chosen by any government. In the three years 
subsequent to his arrival, I saw him often, and knew as 
much of his opinions and feelings as it is permitted an 
outsider to know of a Russian official, and both his 
acts and language have always confirmed my impres- 
sion that the Russian Government did not influence the 
turn events took, and anticipated only a speedy and 
disastrous end to the insurrection, while entertaining the 
most cordial sympathy and good wishes for a more pros- 
perous end than any sane man would have expected. In 
fact, with the exception of the boldest of the insurgents 
and some harebrained Greeks, no one in the island anti- 
cipated anything but ruin from the movement. Captain 
Boutakoff was a devout and liberal Christian, a type of all 
that is most chivalric, patriotic, and compassionate in man- 
hood, large-brained, prudent, and, if zealous enough to 
merit all the honors then and since conferred on him by his 



Russian Intervcntmi. 



77 



sovereign, he was never capable of any patriotic vice 
worse than the most profound reticence. To know him 
as I knew him was to conceive a better opinion of his 
country. I am morally certain that Boutakoff never said 
or did anything to encourage in any way the hopes of the 
Cretans, or lead them to indulge in dreams of European 
intervention in their favor. His position was that of a 
humane observer, and with all the sympathy which exist- 
ed between him and myself, and the mutual confidence in 
our personal intercourse, I could find in his language and 
acts no trace of arriere-pensde in favor of any other inter- 
est than the real good of the Cretans. My own strong 
sympathy with the unhappy islanders made me the ally 
and co-operator with whoever gave them any help, and 
placed me, I have good reason to believe, high in the con- 
fidence of the Russian authorities in Crete and Constanti- 
nople; and, with no political interest in the matter other 
than Cretan, I am free to confess that, while I believed 
Russian policy in Crete to be the good of Crete, I was 
willing to aid in carrying out any plans that policy might 
point out. If, then, these pla^s had pointed out the secret 
encouragement of the insurrection as desirable, I am certain 
that I should have been influenced in that direction. It 
will be seen before I have finished that I am no apologist 
for the Russian conduct of this affair when it had become 
matter of European interest and action ; but I must do the 
Russian Government the justice to declare that it is in no 
wise responsible for the disaster and carnage which the 
war brought on, and that it was not until several months 
that it openly gave the revolt moral encouragement (as a 
means of weakening the Turkish empire ?) 

The Imperial Commissioner having concentrated and re- 



78 TJlc Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

organized his troops at Condapoulo, a village of the plain 
of Keramia, transferred his base of operations to Kalyves, 
on the sea and at the mouth of the river which drains the 
Apokorona, and as soon as the change was effected com- 
menced his march toward Krapi, the main pass of Sphakia, 
The troops were first opposed at Stylos, the first of the 
natural positions of which the country affords so many, and 
were repulsed in a first attack. The vanguard were of 
Egyptians, who were in this campaign systematically put 
foremost and encouraged in every brutality and ferocity, in the 
hope apparently of making them good troops, their natural 
temper being unfavorable to that end. Though the result of 
this treatment certainly did show that nobody is so brutal 
and devilish as a coward, and the fellahs eminently distin- 
guished themselves in devastation and killing of defence- 
less people, they never succeeded in exciting any other 
feeling than hatred and contempt in the Cretan. At Sty- 
los, as in other places, they were beaten with ease, and it 
was only on the following day, when the Cretan positions 
were flanked and the irregulars sent forward, that the in- 
surgents evacuated their strong positions. In this affair 
the Egyptian general, Ismael Pasha, urging his troops to 
retrieve their disgrace at Vrysis, was mortally Avounded. 
The troops attacked the position of Campos, which was 
abandoned by all combatants, the remaining inhabitants 
being put to death, and the insurgents relinquished all the 
country as far as Vafe to the Turks, who ravaged it in 
the most thorough manner, with the extreme of barbarity 
and atrocity to all the Christian inhabitants who were un- 
fortunate enough to fall into their hands. In the neigli- 
borhood of Kephala there are numerous grottoes, partly 
natural and partly excavated, as places of refuge from im- 



Russian Interve7ition. 79 

memorial times, some of them celebrated in the traditions 
of the island for the sieges they had maintained. Into these 
many of the Christians retreated, taking with them their 
effects. In one of these about two hundred villagers, 
mostly old men, women, and children, had taken refuge, 
and, refusing to surrender, were stifled in the cave.* A 
woman came, one day, to my house to obtain protec- 
tion and charity, having been brought a prisoner to 
Canea, and narrated to me the circumstances of her cap- 
ture. She was, she told me, on her way from her village 
to a larger one in the Apokorona to purchase bread, and 
was in the company of eleven men, all Christians and 
unarmed, going with the same intention. They were 
stopped in the road by a party of Seliniote irregulars, who 
deliberately beheaded the men and piled their heads in 
the path, taking her with them to headquarters to extort 
from her information as to the places of concealment of 
her compatriots. Giving no desired indications, she was 
about to be beheaded, when two Egyptians whom she 
had sheltered and fed after the defeat of Vrysis recog- 
nized her, and, stating her kindness to the Pasha, she was 
released and sent to Canea. 

The consequence of this severity was not what Musta- 
pha Pasha expected it to be, to intimidate the Cretans into 
submission, but to drive them into the high mountains, 
where lumdreds perished from hunger and cold. As chil- 
dren as well as adults of both sexes were welcome game 
to the fanaticism called out by the first taste of Christian 



* Certain European journals, discrediting this atrocit}% and, strangely enough, 
on the ground that it had really happened in the previous great revolution, 
affected to consider all the atrocities as tictitious. The incident repeats it- 
self in Cretan history, and I had information from European officers of the 
Turlcish troops of several cases in this war committed under their personal 
observation. 



So The Cretan Ijisurrection of 1866. 

blood, and no partial submission was accepted, the cruelty 
being the means to an end quite characteristic of Turkish 
policy and the nature of the Albanian, who years before 
had earned the tide of the " butcher of Crete " ; and as the 
submitted had no power to induce the submission of the 
more resolute insurgents, there was no possible safety to 
any portion of the population except in the mountains, 
where a large proportion of the weakest died, leaving the 
meii unencumbered for vengeance. Every step of the 
Turkish authorities was a blunder. Submission being use- 
less unless complete, and complete submission out of the 
power of any one to enforce, there remained only com- 
plete insurrection, and this the commissioner succeeded 
in exciting, with a renewal of all the old religious animo- 
sity, and a desperation natural to men to whom surrender 
brought no protection, and submission no guarantee. 



CHAPTER VI. 



O resistance was after this offered until Vafe was 
reached. Here about two hundred Greek vo- 
lunteers and a thousand Cretans, under the 
command of Hadji Mikhali, of Lakus, and Costa Velou- 
daki, of Sphakia, were concentrated. The Cretan chiefs 
were opposed to any regular fighting, and counselled 
a retreat into the ravines, where they could entangle 
the troops and attack them without serious risk to them- 
selves, while a pitched fight was not only not in the 
way of the islanders, but, if lost, as they considered it must 
be in view of the overpowering Turkish forces, it would 
discourage the movement greatly. Zimbrakaki, the com- 
mander of the volunteers, with the most of his men, wished 
not to abandon so strong a position, at which they had, 
moreover, constructed a strong redoubt, without fighting, 
and it was decided to make a stand. The majority of 
the Cretans, however, recognizing no authority but that 
of their captains, withdrew before the fight, which, had 
Mustapha been a commander careful of the lives of his 
troops, might have been decided by flanking movements 
without firing a shot, as his army was composed of ten 
thousand regulars and fully three thousand irregulars, Al- 
banian and Cretan, while the Christians were hardly five 
hundred. No forces the committee could have assembled 
would have made the stand a prudent or justifiable one 
under the circumstances, and its result was what the Cretan 
chiefs had foreseen. Mustapha, as usual, opened with a 
direct assault of Egyptians, which was repulsed with heavy 



82 The Cretan Insurrecimi of 1866. 

loss; but, in the meantime, a body of Albanians were en- 
gaged in climbing the heights which protected the flanks 
of the position, and so nearly succeeded in surprising the 
Greeks that they only saved themselves by precipitate flight. 
A few gallant feflows, indifferent to the odds or the cer- 
tainty of defeat, were killed, taken prisoners, or escaped 
by suicide. The committee, with the Hellenes, retreated 
to-Askyfo, and made the best preparations to defend the 
ravine which their demoralized forces permitted; and so 
formidable was the position that Mustapha decided not to 
attack it, but to be content with the moral advantage of 
the victory at Vafe, which was nearly fatal to the insurrec- 
tion, in spite of the triviality of the losses of the Christians, 
which did not surpass thirty killed of both Hellenes and Cre- 
tans. The latter had attributed invincibility to their allies, 
and to find them defeated so utterly at the first encounter 
paralyzed the insurrection for the moment ; and, if the Turk- 
ish commander had moved energetically on Askyfo, it is 
not probable that any serious defence would have been 
made, and, as there was then no other centre of resistance, 
the taking of Askyfo would have left the movement without 
any power of forming another nucleus of moral force. The 
committee must have dispersed, and the thousands of fami- 
lies assembled in Sphakia must have surrendered. 

But Mustapha, remembering his former disaster in the 
defile of Krapi, hesitated, waited at Prosnero and in the 
Apokorona, while the Sphakiote chieftains craftily negotiat- 
ed, and made their calculations on the amount of assistance 
they could get from Greece, the measure of concessions or 
personal advantages they could hope for as the price of 
submission, and prolonged the practical truce until the 
reaction from the effects of the late defeat began. Hadji 



Coroneos. 83 

Mikhail, with his Lakiotes, went back to Lakus and The- 
riso, entirely abandoned by the troops, and resumed his old 
policy of little and incessant raids to harass the Turkish 
commander and keep his own men from the despondency 
of inaction. 

The immediate salvation of the insurrection was, how- 
ever, the arrival of Col. Coroneos, the ablest by far of the 
Greek chiefs, and the only one, it Avould seem, who was 
capable of adapting his plans to the kind of material he had 
to work with. He arrived too late either to prevent or 
assist in the battle of Vafe, and, seeing the danger the in- 
surrection was in of dying of despondency and the dissi- 
dence of its chiefs, moved at once into the central pro- 
vinces, and, collecting together such Cretans as he could 
find, surprised and cut off two small Turkish detachments, 
and with unimportant advantages reawakened the enthusi- 
asm of the fickle and excitable islanders, gained for him- 
self the prestige of victory, and rapidly recruited a consider- 
able force. 

At the same time, slight advantages were won by Hadji 
Mikhali near Canea, and by other chiefs in the eastern pro- 
vinces, where an Ottoman detachment had been disas- 
trously repulsed in an attempt to penetrate into the Lasithri 
district. Coroneos, with a small body of volunteers, estab- 
lished his headquarters at the old fortified convent of Ar- 
kadi, a building of Venetian construction of such size and 
strength as to be a fit depot of supplies and place of refuge 
as against anything less than a regular siege. From here 
he harassed the detachments which issued from Retimo, 
and kept alive the movement in the district between Spha- 
kia and Mount Ida, and on several occasions menaced the 
city of Retimo, which is fortified by a low wall, almost un- 



84 The Cretan Insurrectioji of 1866. 

provided with artillery. Mustapha, after nearly a month of 
indecision and negotiation, in which the Cretans showed a 
diplomatic ability and duplicity quite worthy the antique 
reputation of the race, found himself compelled to act 
against the new dangers which Coroneos had conjured for 
him. He moved with great rapidity from Episkopi, where 
he had made his headquarters in order that he might watch 
both the great passes into Sphakia, Krapi and Kallikrati, to 
Retimo, and thence to the attack of Arkadi, which had been 
left with a small detachment of volunteers and about one 
hundred and fifty Cretan combatants, including the priests. 
Besides these, there were about one thousand women and 
children, whom Coroneos had made every attempt to dis- 
suade from remaining, but, on account of the opposition of 
the Hegumenos, who would not consent to the expulsion 
of his own relatives, the rest could not be induced to leave 
a place of traditional security, well provisioned and ade- 
quately defended against any attack they could conceive 
of. Coroneos only persuaded about four hundred to return 
to their villages. The Greek commander, with the main 
body of his forces, had been watching Mustapha after his 
taking position at Episkopi, and followed his movements 
to prevent, if possible, his investment of Arkadi. Taking 
the circuit of the hills, he only reached the convent after 
Mustapha's vanguard, which he engaged until nightfall, 
when his men mostly withdrew to the mountains, and Ar- 
kadi was necessarily abandoned to its fate. 

Mustapha, arriving the next day, summoned the convent 
to surrender, but, having no faith in his observance of the 
conditions, the Christians refused, and the attack was 
ordered. The small rifled pieces (mountain-guns) were 
found to produce no effect on the walls or on the new 



The Convent of Arkodi. 85 

masonry with which the gateway had been filled up, and, 
the fire firom the convent being found to be unexpectedly 
hot and effective, the investment was made complete, and 
reinforcements sent for from Retimo, whence nearly the 
whole garrison and Mussulman population came to his 
aid, making the total force employed about 23,000 men,* 
regulars and irregulars, being, in fact, by much the greatest 
part of the Ottoman force in the island. Heavy artillery 
was also ordered from Retimo, and two or three old siege- 
guns were transported with great difficulty (a distance of 
about twelve miles), and placed in battery; and, having 
demolished the masonry in the gateway, an assault was 
made, but the fire from the monastery was so vigorous 
that the attacking column was unable to face it, and after 
two or three assaults had failed, neither the Turkish reg- 
ulars nor their officers being willing to renew it, a body 
of Egyptians were placed in front and driven in at the 
breach by the bayonets of the Turkish soldiers in their rear. 
The convent was a hollow square of buildings, with a 
large court, in the centre of which stood the church. The 
inner and outer walls were equally solid, and the cells and 
rooms opening into the court were garrisoned with bodies 
of the insurgents, who poured a hail of bullets into the 
mass of Ottomans entering, but, the entrance once made, 
defence and submission were alike fruitless. The troops 
killed all who fell into their hands, fighting their way from 
cell to cell, and bringing even their artillery into the rooms 
to penetrate the partition walls. And so the struggle 
of extermination was fought out, until one of the priests, 
who had previously expressed to his companions the de- 



*This estimate, and some of the details I give, I received from the 
secretary of Mustaptia Pasha after the war was over 



86 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

termination to blow up the magazine if the convent were 
entered, finding death inevitable, fulfilled his threat, and 
changed what was before but a profitless butchery into a 
deed of heroism, which again saved the insurrection from 
the jaws of failure. The result of the explosion was very 
limited so far as the combatants were concerned, and pro- 
bably did not kill a hundred Turks. 

B.ut even this catastrophe did not stop the carnage. 
The troops recoiled, but again returned, and the last of 
the combatants defending themselves in the refectory, 
having exhausted their bullets, surrendered on the faith of 
an oath that their lives should be spared, and were at 
once put to death. At the end, thirty-three men and sixty- 
one v/omen and children were spared.* Of the pandemo- 
nium that the walls of Arkadi enclosed, I have heard 
many and ghastly hints, and have in vain asked eye-wit- 
nesses to tell me v/hat they saw; they all said it was too 
horrible to be recalled or spoken of. One of the most 
violent of the Mussulman fanatics of Crete, who had 
performed all the pilgrimages and holy works required by 

* The few men who were spared from this massacre were those who were 
able to appeal to Mustapha Pasha, or some of his suite, on the ground of 
ancient personal relations, or who succeeded in obtaining his clemency by 
some sufficient plea, after surrender. That all the butchery was not due to 
the heat of assault is shown by this and by several incidents reported to me. 
One of the latest parties of the combataucs who surrendered on a promise of 
their lives was passed in review before the Pasha himself, and all who wore 
European clothing- passed under the sword at once, as volunteers, though 
amongst them were several Cretans from Lhe adjacent villages, whose relitives 
attested their nativity. When the refectory surrendered, the Pasha swore on 
the head of the Sultan to sjiare its inmates, who were required to hand out all 
their arms, and were afterwards butchered, even to the women. Mr. Skinner, 
in his " Roughing it in Crete," gives an account of his visit to Arkadi some 
months later, when he found the bodies still unburied, and describes the scene 
in the refectory with ghastly verity. After the fighting was all over, a party 
of irregulars went round with lighted candles, and, holding them to the noses 
of the corpses, gave the coup de g-race to all who breathed. Two Cretans had 
managed to hide on the roof of one of the buildings, where they remained till 
the next day, when, as the Albanians were leaving, one of them shot a pigeon 
which fell on the roof where the Cretans had hid, and, going up to secure his 
game, discovered the unfortiinates, who were put to death in cold blood. On 
the march back to Retimo, all who could not keep up were at once killed, and 
those who reached the city were kept for months in prison and in extreme 
misery. 



The Convent of A rkadi. 8 7 

the Koran, and earnestly desired as the last grace of this 
life to die in the holy war against the infidels, and had 
fought recklessly in all the battles he had been able 
to participate in, went home after Arkadi in despair, 
declaring that destiny forbade his dying the holy 
death. Mustapha was a general of the old type, and 
did not care to win bloodless victories or spare the lives 
of his troops, and the result, apart from the moral effect, 
was far more disastrous to the Porte than to the insurrec- 
tion. The losses in killed and wounded were certainly not 
less than 1,500, and were estimated at a much higher 
figure. The army was occupied thirty-six hours in bring- 
ing the wounded into Retimo, and nearly 500, unable to 
find place there, were brought on to Canea (480 was the 
number given me by a European surgeon in the Ottoman 
service). The Pasha himself saw that he had made a 
blunder, and everything which the local administration 
could effect to disguise and conceal the nature of the 
event was done. I had, however, fortunately sent a 
trusty man to Retimo on the first intimation of the move- 
ment, with orders to get me the most minute and exact 
information possible, and his report, with the confirmation 
of certain Turkish employees and submitted Christians 
residing at Retimo, was in the main accepted by most of 
my colleagues of the consular corps as the nearest to the 
truth which had been obtained ; and, though in these lands 
of fable and myth no exact history can well be written, 
I believe that this is substantially the truth as to Arkadi. 



CHAPTER VII. 




iJUSTAPHA immediately . retraced his steps to 
Canea, and, housing himself outside the walls, 
having sworn not to re-enter his capital until 
the insurgents had been subdued, called a council to 
plan measures to strike a quick blow at the insurrection 
before the effect of Arkadi should be felt in the public 
opinion of Europe. Up to that time the struggle had 
seemed to me a hopeless and insane one, and though 
my warmest sympathies had been, of course, with the 
Cretans, as victims of a monstrous injustice — a sequence 
of crimes — I had not dared utter a word of hope or en- 
couragement in reply to all the earnest appeals to me by 
the friends of the insurrection. Now, seeing the en- 
thusiasm that Arkadi excited amongst the insurgents and 
even the mutis (submitted Christians), I felt that there was 
a hope that Christendom would be compelled to listen to 
the history being enacted before it on this sea-girt moun- 
tain ridge. That the Pasha also felt this was evident both 
from his words and acts. He made new and more tempt- 
ing offers to the Sphakiote chiefs, and employed the well- 
known appliances of Eastern politics to make friends 
amongst the insurgents, but with only partial success. At 
the same time, he made preparations for another attack on 
Sphakia, but this time from the west via Selinos. He, 
therefore, leaving Mehmet Pasha to guard Krapi with 
four or five battalions, concentrated all his available forces 
.besides, at Alikianu, his point de depart for the first Theriso 
campaign. All this country had been abandoned, and had 



The Recoil of the Gun. 89 

to be reconquered, particularly Theriso, which, if unoccu- 
pied, would be a menace to his communications with 
Canea. At the same time, a concentration of the volun- 
teers and insurgents took place in the plain of Omalos, 
by which alone access is had to Sphakia from this side. 
A force of volunteers recently landed were engaged in a 
foolish siege of Kissamos, a worthless jDOsition to either 
side, as it was commanded by the men-of-war, and could 
not be held if taken ; and the different chiefs of the volun- 
teers were kept ineffective by dissensions and jealousies 
amongst themselves, each refusing to obey any other. 
Coroneos and Zimbrakakis, however, united their forces to 
resist the attack on Omalos. The volunteers, under the 
command of Soliotis, a Hellenic officer, made a gallant de- 
fence of the position of Lakus, but were compelled to 
retreat to the upper ridges which border Omalos, while 
Theriso was abandoned before a flank movement of 
Mehmet Pasha, obliged temporarily to leave the Apoko- 
rona undefended. Omalos, however, resisted direct attack, 
and the Pasha moved round by the passes of Kissamos to 
the west of the mountains, devastating as he went, and 
driving before him all the non-combatants of the country 
he passed through. By this time the snow had fallen with 
unusual severity of cold for that climate, and the insur- 
gents, although ill-provided against an inclemency they 
usually escaped from in the plains below, were in 
many respects better off than the troops, who were com- 
pelled to march through ravines which were often moun- 
tain torrents in this rainy season; and as they did not 
carry tents, that they might move with greater rapidity, 
and were often cut off from all communication with the 
base of supplies for days together by the rain filling the 



90 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

roads, at best only bad mule-paths, they suffered prodi- 
giously without fighting or even the encouragement of 
the sack of villages. The Egyptians, clad only in linen 
which their climate required, perished by cold and wet in 
hundreds; pneumonia became an endemic in the army; 
and, to add to the misery, the beasts of burden perished 
under the hardships, and lined the paths with their corpses. 

Mustapha was as merciless a commander as enemy, and, 
though the army was suffering extreme misery, he kept a 
vigilant Avatch for his opportunity, and when, after two weeks 
of fatiguing outpost duty, waiting in hunger, rain, snow, and 
frost, the Hellenes who guarded the difficult pass of St. 
Irene were frozen and starved into negligence, he made a 
dash, one foggy morning, surprised the post, and, taking pos- 
session of the heights crowning the ravine, his army defiled 
leisurely over into the valleys of Selinos. The Greeks 
moved over to the pass of Krustogherako, which admits to 
the plain of Omalos from the Selinos side, and the Pasha, 
believing a defence ready, encamped in the still undevastated 
valleys, and passed some days in burning and ravaging, 
destroying vineyards and mulberry-trees wherever they could 
be reached. The olive-trees, as the reliance of the future 
income of the island, were mostly spared. 

Meanwhile, a " moral intervention " was being prepared, 
which brought respite to the insurrection and deranged all 
the plans of the Pasha. The atrocities of Arkadi had finally 
impressed public opinion with the conviction that the old 
barbarities of the Greek and Turkish wars were being per- 
petrated anew; and even the English consul at Canea 
became convinced that barbaric massacre and ravage were 
being employed as the means of subduing the spirit of the 
islanders, and had reported to his Government certain of 



Pym and the Assurance. 91 

these atrocities, remonstrating, at the same time, to the 
Commissioner, The reports of those consuls who had by 
this time become characterized as the " friends of the insur- 
rection" — viz., Colucci (ItaUan), Dendrinos (Russian), Saco- 
poulos (Greek), and myself — had spread through the Euro- 
pean journals the news of these barbarities and excesses to 
such a degree that remonstrances were made by the ambas- 
sadors at Constantinople, while the clear-headed and true- 
hearted Murray had from the beginning, with great justice 
and discrimination, measured the facts and manifested the* 
warmest sympathy with the Cretans. At this juncture came 
H.B.M.'s sloop Assurance, Commander Pym, relieving the 
JVizard, ordered to Malta. We parted from our gallant 
protector with an emotion not easily comprehended by those 
who do not know the nature and nearness of the dangers of 
the previous four months, or how the resolute and outspoken 
manhood of the young officer in his one-gun steamer had 
stood so long between us and death, as the representative of 
a power in civilization which subsequent years made me 
honor more and more — the English navy. Fortunately, 
Pym had learned from Murray, in the few days which elapsed 
between the arrival of the Assurance and the departure of the 
Wizard, what was the real position of affairs, and followed 
the traditions of his predecessor. He had, moreover, a cer- 
tain defiance of red-tape and a feverishness to distinguish 
himself which did not always measure carefully the purport 
of general orders, and which, perhaps, in battle would have 
made him turn a blind eye to a signal of recall, and now 
disposed him to abandon on any pretext the cold-blooded 
neutrality of his government. 

Pym soon determined that a very small pretext would 
suffice to make him throw himself in the way of a decided 



92 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

intervention in behalf of the non-combatants, ^nd did not 
fail to exert all his influence on Dickson to obtain an official 
request that he should cruise on the coast in advance of the 
Pasha's army, and to " seize every available opportunity for 
affording refuge to any Christian in distress who may seek 
protection on board his ship," and to convey such refugees 
to Greece. Pym had declared to me (and possibly to 
Dickson) that he should, on his own responsibility, take 
such a step if he did not get the requisition from the consul; 
and, on leaving for a run to Candia, said that he should go 
thence to Selinos and put himself in the way of humanity. 
Under these circumstances, Dickson's humanity, further 
stimulated by Murray's and Pym's enthusiasm, got the 
better of his official prepossessions, and, without waiting 
for a reply from his Government to a petition addressed to 
all the Christian powers to send ships to save the women 
and children exposed to such chances as those of Arkadi, 
had followed up his remonstrances to the Commissioner 
with a proposal to send a ship to pick up the families 
gathered before the army in its movement into Selinos. 
The Commissioner, still under the impression of the effect 
produced by recent events on European public opinion, 
dared not refuse his consent to such a demand from his 
best friend, and, it may be conceived, reluctantly, verbally, 
and evasively gave it. But Dickson, too honest and earnest 
to comprehend the duplicity, took him literally at his word. 
As a consequence of all these considerations and conclusions, 
the Assurance found herself at Suia of Selinos while Mus- 
tapha was pounding away at the passes, and took three 
hundred and fifteen women and children and twenty-five 
wounded men on board and transported them to Peirseus. 
No act could have been purer or more free from ulterior 



Pym and the Assurance. 93 

views than this of Pym's — an expression of what not only 
he, but all of his fellow-officers of the English navy whom I 
saw on the station, with one exception, felt — the compas- 
sionate desire to stand between women and children and 
the devilish policy which butchered them to terrify their 
husbands and fathers into submission, I saw Pym and his 
officers on their return from this voyage, and not one of 
them but would have given a month's pay to have gone on 
another similar trip. Their Government, in passing judg- 
ment on the act, could not condemn it, but to two parties, 
unfortunately, it was a political movement — the Hellenes, 
who insisted on considering it an intervention in their favor, 
and so compelled the English Government to forbid its 
repetition ; and the French, who regarded it as a manoeuvre 
to block the game of the Viceroy. The French agent who 
afterwards succeeded Derche assured me that they had the 
most conclusive evidence that Captain Pym had orders from 
London to give the insurrection a jog, because the annexa- 
tion to Egypt would have been the result of the failure of 
the insurrection at this juncture, and that, although Pym 
was immediately recalled and, to all intents and purposes, 
disgraced, and I believe retired on account of his venture, 
he was only so in appearance, and really had been re- 
warded for his apparent punishment. 

There were, at this time, two Italian corvettes, an Aus- 
trian frigate and gunboat, and a French gunboat, besides 
the Russian frigate, all of which, except the Frenchman, 
had, or were reported to have, orders to follow the lead of 
any other Power in rendering assistance to the non-com- 
batants, and most of the commanders were anxious to fol- 
low Pym, but their delay in learning of his venture, and 
the quick disapproval of it, deterred all from intervention, 



94 The Cretan Inszirrection of 1866. 

and while correspondence was going on the war seemed 
suspended. It appeared finally to be decided that no one 
should imitate the English commander. The insurrection 
seemed on the point of collapsing, through the severity of the 
winter and the discouragement of the Cretans. Volunteers 
had been coming over from Greece — a motley mass of 
all nations — many of them from Smyrna and other Turkish 
parts, who, as soon as they landed, began to breed disaffec- 
tion and maltreat the Cretans, creating the most angry feel- 
ing in the island, which did not stop short of violence. At 
this time, the whole body were driven into the Sphakian 
mountains, where, exposed to intense cold, half-fed, and 
without any discipline, they were dangerous only to the in- 
surrection, and yielded readily to proffers of the Pasha' to 
give them free exit and conveyance to Greece. A portion 
of them accepted the proposition on condition that they 
should be sent on European ships, and the Vice-Commis- 
sioner called a council of those consuls whose governments 
had naval representatives in Cretan waters, to propose that 
their ships should go to receive the disaffected volunteers 
but with the condition that no non-combatants or Cretans 
should be accepted. None of the commanders were will- 
ing to accept the mission on these terms, except the French, 
and the gunboat which he commanded went, therefore, to 
Lutro, a port of Sphakia (the Port Phcenix of St. Paul), and 
embarked four hundred and eighty men, who were landed 
at Peirseus, where they were received with violence and in- 
sults by the excited populace, and some barely escaped pay- 
ing the last penalty for their defection. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



HE remaining auxiliaries, paralyzed by want of 
organization, the usual dissensions of the chiefs, 
and their mutual jealousies, even more than by 
their want of supplies, retreated before Mustapha, who, 
after some weeks of indecision, resumed his campaign ; 
but, instead of following up his advantages by land, and 
getting possession of Omalos as a better base of opera- 
tions, and preventing the Cretans from reoccupying it, he 
embarked his troops at Suia, and attempted to land at 
St. Rumseli, the entrance of the ravine of Samaria, the 
stronghold and place of refuge par excellence of Sphakia, 
and where, at this time, were gathered thousands of 
women and children. This movement menaced too closely 
the mountaineers, who opposed the landing, and finally 
repelled the attack, as well as a subsequent one at Tripiti, 
nearer to Suia, when Mustapha returned to his camp in 
Sehnos, and passed another period of inaction, during 
which the insurrectionary committees in Greece, admon- 
ished by the imminent danger the movement seemed to 
have evaded for the moment, renewed their efforts to 
send relief, and threw over other bodies of volunteers, 
mainly Mainotes, a hardy, courageous race, regarded as 
better irregulars even than the Albanians, who, landing in 
the eastern provinces, revived the insurrection where the 
government was ill able to meet it. The best of the volun- 
teers, under Coroneos and Yennissarli, recovering from their 
demoralization by rest and the removal of the more dis- 
orderly elements, moved eastward to join the nev/ bodies, 



g6 The Cretan Inszirrection of 1866. 

leaving the Sphakiotes to guard their own country. If 
Mustapha, after the affair of Krustogherako, had followed 
the attack up with vigor, two weeks would have finished 
the insurrection. Even as it was, Sphakia being strongly- 
disposed to purchase freedom from conquest by neutrality, 
and several of the captains having openly embraced the 
Turkish cause, there seemed very little hope for the pro- 
longation of the insurrection, when another of those wanton 
acts of barbarity, which had on more than one occasion 
strengthened the insurgents instead of weakening- their 
courage, gave it another jog. 

The Russian minister at Constantinople had, as soon as 
the news reached that place that an English ship had 
rescued a number of non-combatants from Crete, obtained 
from the Grand Vizier a reluctant consent that other ships 
might intervene, and despatched a steamer at once to 
Crete, Avith orders to the Grand Admiral to commence 
deportation. A violent storm favored the Turks by delay- 
ing the avviso for several days, and, when final'y the order 
came, we had the news that the English Government had 
disapproved Pym's acts, and the Commissioner (who had 
plenary powers in all matters connected with Crete) had 
withdrawn the permission given to Dickson, and both 
Dendrino and Boutakoff hesitated to execute the order, 
anticipating its revocation. The former, a timid, irresolute 
man, master of the arts of intrigue, but lost as soon as he 
had an open part to play in which he must bear the re- 
sponsibility of decision, was more concerned for his own 
security than for the fate of the Christians, and hesitated to 
give a requisition to the captain to move, while the latter, 
indifferent to the consequences to himself, as we'ghtd 
against the relief of the Christian sufferers, hesitated !'> 



Ignatieff Again. 97 

move before getting renewed orders after the long delay, 
lest he might compromise his Government in the event of 
a change of its momentary policy, which was to avoid all 
appearance of ultra- advocacy of the insurgent cause. It 
lacked but two or three days of our regular weekly courier 
when the avviso had arrived, and both the Russian offi- 
cials had decided to wait the courier before moving. 
"4^ As for myself, since the affair of Arkadi I had thrown 
aside all reserve, and, while never going beyond the lim- 
its of moral intervention, I had used all my influence 
with my colleagues, and with our minister at Constan- 
tinople as well as our Government, to provoke acts of 
positive intervention. I made no secret of it, nor did the 
Turkish Government of its hostihty to me. A patrol of 
zapties watched my front door, and another my back door, 
and no Cretan dared enter my house. I was regarded as 
the postman of the insurgents, and so complete was the 
delusion that the authorities entirely neglected to watch 
my colleagues, two of whom daily received and sent letters 
to the mountains. All the little persecutions which a petty 
local government could inflict v/ere laid on me, and I 
reciprocated, as I best could, by disseminating news of the 
true condition of the insurrection, and stimulating the 
activity of my colleagues. Mr. Morris, our minister at 
Constantinople, at first strongly under the influence of the 
English ambassador, the just and liberal Lord Lyons, 
became convinced that nothing was to be expected in the 
way of humane intervention from England, and passed en- 
tirely over to the Russian policy, and lent me his whole 
prestige and influence, made himself my defender at the 
Porte, and gave me instructions after my own drawing 
up. I made common cause, therefore, with my Russian 



98 The Cretan Insiirtection of 1866. 

colleague, on whose irresolution I managed, in most cases, 
to impose my resolutions, and, little by little, gained ali 
the control over him which I desired for critical emer- 
gencies, while I flattered his amour propre by giving him 
the credit of making up his own mind. I had also organ- 
ized a sort of news agency, by which I was able to get 
the earliest and most reliable news of all movements in the 
island, so that gradually not only the consuls but the 
naval officers came to expect from me the most reliable 
information. ^/ 

During the few days of suspense between the arrival of 
Boutakofif's orders and the arrival of the courier which 
should confirm or revoke them, the act of brutality to 
which I have alluded came to quicken decision. I had 
received news that a Turkish frigate, hoisting English 
colors, had run in near the coast of Sphakia, and when the 
unfortunate refugees, expecting aid, came down to the 
shore, the Turks opened on them with shot and shell. A 
Turkish cannonade is generally a pretty harmless affair, 
except for accidental casualties, but the affair gave me all 
the justification I needed to put a pressure on Dendrino to 
issue a requisition for the Grand Admiral to go at once to 
the south coast of the island. That night the post steamer 
was due, and, from the absence of any despatches to the 
Italian commander similar to those to the Russian, I anti- 
cipated that the movement had failed, and that counter- 
orders would come to Boutakoff by the post. I went at 
once, therefore, to Dendrino, and, putting the most ener- 
getic pressure on him, dictated a letter to Boutakoff, who 
was on board the frigate at Suda, requesting him to get 
up steam and go to the Sphakian coast without delay, and 
did not leave till I saw the messenger on the way and 



Respite. 99 

beyond recall, knowing that if I left Dendrino it would stop 
there. Boutakoff, nothing loth, fired up at once, and at 
nine p.m. was on his way. At midnight the post arrived, as 
anticipated, with counter orders, but too late. Except 
myself, no one was so glad that the countermand failed as 
General Ignatiefif, the Russian minister. 

The Grand Admiral went to Tripiti, where Avere thou- 
sands of non-combatants hiding in caves and living 
amongst the rocks, waiting the relieving European ships, 
but when the Russian boats ran in they were fired on by 
the Cretan guards, made suspicious by the Turkish frauds. 
Once assured of their friends, however, the people swarm- 
ed out of their holes like ants, and, as Boutakofi" told me, 
in a few minutes the whole coast was lined with them, 
more than he could possibly stow. He took about 1,200, 
and sailed for Peirteus. 

This deportation had a triple effect : first, in strengthening 
the Russian party in the island by assuring the Cretans of 
the good faith of the Russian Government, that party hav- 
ing been hitherto very inconsiderable ; second, in relieving 
a large body of men of the care of their families ; and, third, 
in deciding doubtful and uninvaded districts to take up arms, 
and breaking off" the negotiations between the Commissioner 
and the Sphakiote chiefs, by which the former had hoped to 
have Sphakia given up v/ithout combat. The most tempt- 
ing offers were refused, and the people of Eastern Sphakia, 
under the coinmand of old Costa Veloudaki, entered on the 
war-path again, and, surprising a Turkish post at Episkopi, 
drove the garrison, with serious losses, back to Retimo ; and, 
near the same time, Coroneos and Korakas on one slope of 
Ida, and Petropoulaki, the chief of the Mainote volunteers, on 
the other, harassed and drove back all the outposts in the 



TOO The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

open country, and shut up the Turks of the central district in 
the fortress of Retimo ; while some battles, better worth the 
name than the desultory skirmishes which most of the com- 
bats had been, were fought in the open country around Can- 
dia, where Reschid Effendi proved himself a shrewd and ca- 
pable strategist, and drove the insurgents back to the western 
slopes of Ida after sharp fighting, in which the dissensions 
of the Greek and Cretan chiefs were more conspicuous than 
their wisdom ; but everywhere the insurrection showed new 
vigor. 




CHAPTER IX. 

IMMEDIATELY after the affair of Arkadi, I 
had, in conveying to our Government the 
petition of the Cretans for ships to be sent 
to cany away their famiHes, recapitulated the course 
I had taken, and proposed to the Government that, 
if an American man-of-war came to Crete for the deporta- 
tion of non-combatants, and the local government made any 
protest, I should reply that, their conduct having been in 
violation of every dictate of humanity and law, they were 
not entitled to appeal to the latter in their own' behalf, and 
that I should advise the officer in command to remove the 
families without reference to Turkish prohibition. I re- 
ceived in reply the following despatch : 

Department of State, Washington, Dec. 25, 1866, 
W. J. Stillman, Esq., U. S. Consul, Can6a : 

Sir : Your despatch No. 32, with regard to the Cretan insurrec- 
tion and the attitude 5^ou have assumed in the matter, has been 
received. 

Your action and proposed course of conduct, as set forth in said 
despatch, are approved. Mr. Morris, our minister resident at 
Constantinople, will be informed of the particulars set forth in 
your despatch, and of the approval of your proceedings. 

Rear-Admiral Goldsborough has been instructed to send a ship 
of-war to your port. 

I am, sir, your obedient servant, 

W. H. Seward. 

This despatch was immediately communicated to Mr. 
Morris ; by him to the Hellenic minister at Constantino- 



I02 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

pie; and thence to the committee at Athens; thence to 
the insurgents, through whom it rapidly spread and con- 
firmed their warlike resolutions. The Russian commander, 
like Pym, had been obliged to desist firom any new attempt, 
and waited for our steamer to come. The Italian com- 
manders were eager to avail themselves of their standing 
instructions to follow the ships of other nations in this work, 
and so a new phase of the struggle awaited the appearance 
of the Stars and Stripes. 

Meanwhile, Mustapha Pasha, skirmishing along the coast 
of Sphakia, bargaining and cajoling the chiefs of the for- 
midable Sphakiotes, wasted his time and troops in fruitless 
encounters and under the inclement season. At length, 
unable to proceed by land, and compelled by his programme 
to pass through the canton, he embarked all his troops at 
Suia, and transported them to Franco Castelli, where there 
is a plain country between the mountains and the sea, and, 
after negotiations with the chiefs of the villages on the south 
slope, was permitted to go, without molestation, through the 
defile of Comitades into the plain of Askyfo, where he en- 
camped to receive the submission of the Sphakiotes. What 
were the inducements which permitted him to pass by a 
ravine where one hundred resolute men could have destroy- 
ed his whole army, I do not know ; but it is hardly conceiv- 
able, considering subsequent events, that it was owing to 
any general complicity of the mountaineers, but probably 
to the defection or bribing of that chief whose place it was 
to guard the shore end of the defile near which his village 
was. He had long been known to be a warm personal 
friend of the Pasha, and had on one occasion prevented a 
blockade-runner from landing her cargo on his territory. 
The day after Mustapha had entered Askyfo, one of the 



More Disaster. 103 

captains of that section came to me to ask for counsel, say- 
ing that they were imdecided whether to submit or fight, on 
account of their famihes ; but, if the foreign ships were com 
ing, as they had heard, they would attack Mustapha in As- 
kyfo. I reiDlied that I could in no wise counsel him, or 
make myself responsible for what they should do, but trans- 
lated for him Mr. Seward's despatch, and told him that I 
expected daily a ship, and that as soon as she came she 
would go, in company with the Russian, to the coast of 
Sphakia, and relieve the families there. He returned to 
Askyfo, and a council was held, at Avhich it was decided to 
attack Mustapha at once. The Pasha, warned by his spies, 
broke up his camp at midnight, and, when the Christians 
gathered at the head of the defile of Krapi at daybreak, they 
found the heights guarded and the rear-guard of the Turk- 
ish army already entering the ravine. The Christians were 
but six hundred men, but they attacked at once. The 
pass is not a simple gorge, but a precipitous pass, in some 
places divided by sub-ridges with only mule-paths, and in 
some passages very bad at that, the way being partially 
choked with boulders and overgrown with scrubby oaks, 
amongst which the Christians concealed themselves in 
squads, and fired on the passing troops in security and de- 
liberation, sometimes even throwing stones on them. The 
latter lost all order, and in confusion and separate parties 
passed through, scarcely having the courage to stop and 
return the fire. An attendant of the Pasha, who rode at 
his side (when the path permitted), told me that the balls 
were like an infernal hail, and that the Pasha pushed through 
without stopping to make any defence. Defence was im- 
possible, indeed ; for no rear-guard dared make a stand, 
with the certainty of being blockaded and cut off when the 



I04 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

main body had passed through. The Egyptians — timid as 
sheep in danger, but brutal as wolves when they had to deal 
with defenceless Christians — paid the penalty of their cruelty, 
and received no quarter. The native guides saved them- 
selves in the rout, and many of the troops, confused in the 
intricacies of the way, hid themselves in the thickets, where, 
for several days after, parties were discovered and de- 
spatched, no quarter being given. 

"VVliat the losses were was never known, returns not being 
to the taste of the old irregular, or consoling to his Govern- 
ment ; but when the army reached the Apokorona and re- 
assembled, it Avas reported by Mustapha (official report, 
February 6, 1867) at 6,000 men, too large an estimate in the 
opinion of the officers of the men-of-war at Suda, who wit- 
nessed the defile as they debouched on the plain of Canea, 
whence they had gone out for the Theriso campaign, in 
October, 17,850, with eight guns, by the official statement 
to Mr. Dickson (Cretan Blue Book, Mr. Dickson's despatch 
of October 15, 1866), besides several thousand irregular re- 
inforcements. The commander of one of the Italian ships, 
who took the trouble to count some of the battalions, re- 
ported one of them to me at less than 300, and this an 
Egyptian battaUon which had come 900 strong. It was 
evident to all in Canea that Mustapha's administration was 
an utter failure. The spring had come; new bodies of 
volunteers had been thrown into the island, and the trips 
of the blockade runners continued without a single disaster. 
The Turkish forces, which, at the assumption of the com- 
mand by the Commissioner, had been above 30,000, were 
now, by my estimate, less than 20,000. The officid re- 
ports, as usual, chanted victory, but the under-ofticials at 
Canea were not so reticent, and a profound gloom settled 



Moi'c Disaster. 105 

over the whole Mussulman population. The more ener- 
getic of the Turkish commanders openly attacked Musta- 
pha's cautious policy, and demanded a more dashing cam- 
paign. 

Mustapha, by way of reply and justification, gave to 
the most noisy of his insubordinates a division to attack 
the insurgents at Omalos, where the prudent, if a little use- 
less, Zimbrakaki commanded a body of volunteers, and was 
supported by Hadji Mikhali with his Lakiotes, Criaris, one 
of the bravest of Crete, with the Seliniotes, and all the men 
of the destroyed villages of the Rhizo and Kissamos, a 
desperate throng which every movement of the Turks did 
but increase. Ali Riza Pasha, to whom the movement was 
entrusted, unwilling to risk again the twice-attempted road 
by Lakus, made his attack by a pass further to the west, 
which led to a declivity by which approach to the plain of 
Omalos was possible but not easy, and which the Cretans 
call kakoi plevroi (bad slopes). Tne assault was against 
men hidden amongst huge fragments of rock and brush- 
wood, and, though obstinately pushed, made no headway, 
and the troops, after losses, as usual unreported, retreated 
to Hosti in the valley, where they were followed and sur- 
rounded by the Cretans, and all communication was cut 
off with Canea for two or three days. Here Hadji Mikhali 
performed one of those feats which recall the old days of 
Greek heroism. Descending at night with a small party 
of picked men, he cut his way through the Turkish camp, 
and disappeared on the other side. The Turks began an 
indiscriminate firing of musketry and artillery in every direc- 
tion, and kept it up until daylight. Mikhali was certainly 
the most remarkable character developed by the insurrec- 
tion. The son of a chieftain of the same name, who is one 



io6 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

of the traditional heroes of the "great insurrection" (1821 
to 1830), he inherited an influence, with genuine strategic 
abihties and undaunted courage, which, with great personal 
prowess, made him the terror of the Turkish authorities. 
I have often remarked the im conscious adaptation of 
Homer's description of Achilles used by the Cretans in 
speaking of Mikhali, his most-dwelt-on characteristics being 
his beauty, his swiftness of foot, and immense strength and 
stature. 

Ali Riza was only rescued from the hands of the Cretans 
(for M. Zimbrakaki never ventured from his safe retreat, 
though he had now an opportunity to destroy the whole 
division of Turks by an energetic and concentrated attack, 
and the Hadji had to work with his own people) by a strong 
column from Canea opening up the way for his retreat ; and 
with the abandonment of this plan all hopes of making any 
impression on Sphakia were abandoned, the more as all the 
villages now took up arms and threw off any pretence of 
composition. 

In the eastern provinces, at the same time, Reschid 
Effendi, organizing an army including all the disposable 
forces at Candia and Retimo, estimated at 10,000 men, 
moved to attack the volunteers and Cretans under Coro- 
neos, Petropoulaki (chief of the Mainotes), Korakas, Skou- 
las, and others, for once fortunately united, in Amari, the 
broken country on the western slope of Ida. Their plan 
seemed to be to pass through the canton to the south sliore, 
and return by the plain of Messara and the eastern slope 
of the mountain to Candia. The Christians drew the whole 
force of the Turks into a difficult position at Yerakari, and 
then, by a vigorous hand-to-hand attack, cut the column in 
two, the smaller half pursuing the proposed route, the other 



A Page from the Blue Book. 107 

being driven back to Retimo, losing baggage, two guns, 
and quantities of ammunition and provisions. The smaller 
detachment, pursued, were overtaken at St. Thomas, where 
they had halted to rest, and again routed and pursued to 
the neighborhood of Candia. 

Both the divisions of Ali Riza and Reschid, in returning, 
avenged themselves on the submitted Cretans in their way. 
The following extract from a letter from Lieut. Murray to 
Mr. Erskine, Enghsh Minister at Athens, characterizes the 
position of things in the whole island : 

" Canea, February 24, 1867. 

"Things appear to get worse and worse, and the end 
appears further off than it did six months ago. To-day 
the troops returned from an unsuccessful attempt to force 
a passage into Omalos, partly owing, they say, to the plain 
being covered with melted snow, but in a great rheasure 
owing to the stubborn resistance offered by the insurgents 
under Zimbrakaki. What the next move will be I am as 
yet unable to say; report says they are going to Kissamos. 
I fancy, vmless reinforcements arrive, they will soon have 
to withdraw inside the fortified towns. 

'■'■February 25. — A sad tale was told to me yesterday. A 
shoemaker living in Canea, and well known to all as a quiet, 
peaceful man, fled to the hills when the insurrection broke 
out. There he followed his trade till three months ago, 
when, the country round Canea appearing to be pretty 
quiet, he came and settled at the village of Fourna, in the 
plain of Alikianu. A few days ago, his vv^ife ran in and 
said, ' There are soldiers coming into the village.' He re- 
plied, ' Don't be alarmed, they have been here before.' A 
few minutes afterwards, two soldiers dragged him out of 



io8 The Cretan Insttrrection of 1866. 

the house, and beat hhn so that they broke his arm, which 
caused him to faint. His wife brought him some water, as 
did also an officer, and left him. Shortly afterwards, while 
he was still unable to rise, two other soldiers came up and 
despatched him with their swords. This is the history of 
one out of eighteen killed in the same village that day, told 
me by his poor wife, who, together with her four children, 
came to seek redress from Mustapha Pasha. He gave her 
two hundred piastres, and said he would enquire about it. 

" I am sorry to tell you that the troops have again gone 
out — one division to Kissamos, the other to Apokorona. 
The people are again flying to the hills before the advent 
of the troops, and I greatly fear more atrocities." 




CHAPTER X. 

Y this time, the Powers had learned how 
utterly mendacious all the Turkish official 
reports were, and that the insurrection was 
further than ever from being suppressed; and the Porte, 
dreading the effect of the knowledge of the utter failure 
of the Imperial Commission from which it had promised 
itself such immense results, .developed a new plan, in which 
the douceurs of a plebiscite were to be administered by its 
armies, and a ^ew assembly constituted, who were to sit at 
Constantinople, and represent both the Mussulman and 
Christian populations as an advisory council on the new 
measures of reform which were to pacify the conquered 
islanders. The most curious of all the strange characteris- 
tics of this aifair were the persistence of the Turkish Govern- 
ment in misinforming Europe of the position of the struggle, 
and the willingness of official Europe to be misinformed. 
Now, at a moment when "every corps of the Turkish army 
had been defeated, the Porte, with a ludicrous gravity 
which would have been comical in the extreme if one 
could have forgotten the misery of starvation, of barbarism, 
death by cold and fire and sword, with atrocities without 
name which were momentarily being perpetrated by its 
authority on the helpless victims of its paternal tenderness, 
sent to Crete its ablest diplomatic agent. Server Effendi, 
with the following proclamation, nominally addressed to 
the Commissioner, but really to the Powers, Server Effendi 
being actually the plenipotentiary, Mustapha being in dis- 



no The Cretan InsurrecHo?i pj^ .iS66. 

grace, but openly honored by an honor as delusive as the 
victories by which he had secured it : 

" It is needless to tell thee that we are deeply grieved at 
the insurrection which has been fomented in Crete by ill- 
intentioned people, at the evils which have resulted from it 
to the inhabitants, and at the blood which a cruel neces- 
sity has forced to flow. If, notwithstanding all their 
efforts, our Government have not been able to prevent 
these misfortunes, if the paternal advice which they gave 
to the misguided inhabitants, in order to bring them back 
to the line of duty, have remained fruitless, the responsi- 
bility must wholly fall, before God and the tribunal of 
pubhc opinion, upon the instigators of these calamities. 

" The wise behavior, however, of the islanders who, 
understanding the real state of things, remained faithful to 
us, and, on the other hand, the bravery of which our Im- 
perial army has given most signal proofs in fighting against 
the insurgents, as well as the wise measures which thou 
hastenedst to take, have powerfully contributed to restore 
peace and security in all parts of the island, with tlie excep- 
tion of such as are infested by the presence of foreign 
brigands. Those islanders who, giving way, to culpable 
insinuations and deluded by false promises, have some time 
followed these seditious agents, have hastened to profit by 
the general amnesty granted beforehand, *and have returned 
to their duties. A committee has therefore been formed in 
our capital for the purpose of examining and framing a 
future mode of administration of the island for the new 
Governor, who is to be sent there as soon as matters shall 
have reassumed their normal condition. Thus the com- 
mittee will have to look to the best means of repairing the 
ills sustained by the country, to perfect the administration 



Change of Administration. 1 1 1 

in conformity with the legitimate and indisiDensable wants 
of the people, and to effect thus that prosperity which re- 
sults from the development of agriculture and commerce ; 
in a word, they will have to procure a general bettering of 
the condition of the country. But for these measures re- 
lating to the government of the island to succeed, and for 
the welfare and prosperity to be realized, it has been deemed 
necessary to consult likewise some of the principal people 
of the island, who enjoy the confidence of the inhabitants. 
On the suggestion, therefore, of our Government, we have 
approved of and instruct thee to proceed to the election, 
by the inhabitants, of one or two notables, Mohammedans 
or not, taken in each district, and to send here as soon as 
possible those who may have been selected. Be careful to 
bring to the knowledge of the public the present Imperial 
firman, and to be at the same time with the inhabitants of 
the island the interpreter of the good intentions with which 
we are animated towards them." 

Server Effendi was really a most intelligent and (for a 
Turk) humane administrator, a^nd, had he not been crippled 
by the necessity of keeping up the absurd pretence of an 
actual conquest achieved, might have found some sortie 
from the difficulty, which v/ould have arrested the train of 
disasters which afterwards brought the Porte so near to its 
final quietus. He made himself no delusions, and, I be- 
lieve, propagated none at Constantinople. In point of 
fact, no one of the responsible governments there was now 
deceived ; but the Sultan had passed into a monomaniacal 
condi'.'on of fury on the subject of the conquest of Crete, 
and no Grand Vizier could have remained in office who 
proposed an abandonment of the war without conquest. 
The powers, except England, counselled the Porte to 



112 llie Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

yield a principality, and it is probable that, if England had 
acceded, the Cretans would, at that time, have accepted 
this solution of the question in spite of the Hellenic influ- 
ence. The policy of England has always seemed to me 
mistaken to Turkey and faithless to the Cretans, for, in 
effect, all the powers signatary of the protocol of February 
20, 1S30, were morally bound to secure to the Cretans a 
similar condition to that of Samos. But it must,, at the 
same time, be admitted that this policy was open, consist- 
ent, and, so far as Turkey was concerned, loyal, while that 
of France was double, disloyal to all her allies, wavering, 
and entirely egotistic; and that of Russia was consistent 
only in its unfaltering hostility to Turkey, and its willing- 
ness to favor any affair that promised to weaken her em- 
pire. VThe tactics of Greece were of a nature to make tlie 
chances of Crete more precarious than they need have 
been. The policy of Crete for Greece, rather than Crete 
for her own good, made confusion and jealousy in the con- 
duct of the war much greater than they need have been. 
What the Cretans wanted was a good leader, arms, and 
bread. Greece sent them rival chiefs without subordina- 
tion, a rabble of volunteers, who quarrelled with the island- 
ers, and weakened the cause by deserting it as soon as they 
felt the strain of danger and hardship ; and if, after the first 
campaign, they were more wise in enrolling men to go to 
Crete, they still allowed the jealousies and hostilities of the 
leaders to go unchecked by any of those measures which 
were in their power. But the radical fault of the Hellenes 
was that they compromised the question by the introduc- 
tion of the question of annexation, and forced it into the 
field of international interests, disguising the real causes 
and justification of the movement, and making it impossible 



Hellenic B hinders. 113 

for England consistently with her declared policy to enter- 
tain the complaints of the Cretans without also admitting 
to consideration the pretensions of the Hellenes. If the 
latter had not intruded their views on the tapis, the former 
might have been heard; but, from the moment in which 
annexation to Greece became the alternative of the recon- 
quest of Crete, the English Government could clearly not 
interfei-e against the Porte without upsetting its own work, 
and if, in some minor respects, especially the question of 
the principality, she had been more kind to Crete, no one 
could have found fault with a policy which was, in its gene- 
ral tendency, obligatory on her. Her great mistake was 
in not recognizing more clearly the utterly irresponsible 
nature of the Turkish administration, and compelling the 
Porte to redress the wrongs which even Dickson, philottoman 
as he was to the last degree, could not ignore the reality of, 
before they had passed into the arbitration of arms. I be- 
lieve that, if Lord Lyons had had the direction of affairs 
from the beginning, he would have composed the difficulty 
without bloodshed, for he saw clearly and understood the 
real merits of the question, ~^ 

Server Efifendi succeeded in naming deputies from nearly 
all the districts of the island, and in compelling most of 
them to go to Constantinople. One escaped, and came to 
my house to ask asylum. Of course I was compelled to 
give it, and he remained for six weeks my guest, when he 
escaped, disguised as a Russian sailor, on board a Russian 
corvette, and went to Greece. The others were sent under 
guard to the capital, where they also demanded protection 
from the Russian Legation, declaring that they came 
against their own will, and that of the Cretan people ; and 
so in effect ended a farce, put on the stage v/ith all the 



114 ^-^^ Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

appliances of the Turkish Government, and played with 
their best actors. 

The arrival of a new swift steamer from England, for the 
purpose of running the blockade, gave a new elan to the 
insurrection, and the Arkadi (formerly the Dream, of Am- 
erican blockade celebrity), was from this time until her 
destruction in August of 1867 an element of the first im- 
portance in the war. The former blockade-runner, the 
Panhellenion, was a slow steamer, never making above nine 
miles per hour, and her success in provisioning without a 
mishap the insurrection for nearly a year, with a squadron 
of thirty ships to watch her, is one of the most surprising 
instances of capacity on one side, or incapacity on the 
other, in the history of marine warfare. The Arkadi not 
only brought arms and supplies, but she carried away at 
almost every trip numbers of non-combatants, and 
formed a safe and reliable means of communication be- 
tween Greece and Crete, by which messengers, supplies of 
all kinds, and every requisite for the war were transported 
v/ith tolerable certainty. The warm weather enabled the 
insurgents to re-enter the field in greater numbers, and 
it finally became evident that the war was to be one which 
would only be finished by the exhaustion of the resources 
either of Greece or Turkey. 

A cliange in administration at Athens had brought a 
more capable and thoroughly national council into power, 
under the presidency of Mr. Comoundouros, the ablest and 
clearest-headed statesman of the Hellenic kingdom, who 
had discouraged an appeal to arms until the war became a 
fait accompli, when he advocated a policy of aid to Crete 
coute quHl coiite, and, on assuming power, made the insurrec- 
tion his chief care. The whole resources of Greece were 



Effect of Hellenic Politics. 115 

devoted to it, and the funds of the insurgent committee at 
Athens were fed directly from the national treasury. There 
was, no doubt, scarcely any disguise about the complicity ; 
but public feeling in Greece was so thoroughly enlisted that 
no government could have existed which did not unmis- 
takably favor the insurrection. Unfortunately for the suc- 
cess of the Greek plans, the government did not impose on 
the Cretans an effective organization and a supreme com- 
mander. It still based its chief hope on European inter- 
vention, and counted on a limitation of the struggle by their 
influence, instead of preparing to act in the most complete 
independence. There was some excuse for this in a states- 
man-for-the-moment, in the fact that intervention had al- 
ready begun by the overtures of Russia, acceded to at this 
date by France, whose Emperor was at the juncture ready 
to come to an understanding with the Czar on the basis of 
mutual concession; but Comoundouros should have seen 
that the readiness of Greece to endure and prolong a war 
with Turkey would be the best argument for the interven- 
tion the former desired. Greek politics have always had 
the fault of being based on sentimentality, and calculating 
too much on the sympathy of Christendom and classical 
scholars, neither of which has ever played a noteworthy 
part in modern Hellenic history, for even the genuine phil- 
hellenism of 182 1 would have accomplished nothing had it 
not been that Turkey stood in the way of Russian combi- 
nations. The Greeks seem never to comprehend that go- 
vernments are purely political, and never influenced by sen- 
timent or religious affinities. They count that Hellenism 
and Christianity -must always be weighed in the Eastern 
question, and in this case calculated on forcing the hand of 
the Christian powers by these appliances ; while if they had 



11 6 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

proved that they were capable of conducting the war with 
energy and good system, preparing themselves meanwhile 
for a war with Turkey, Europe must have interfered, as a 
war between Greece and Turkey involved too momentous 
questions to be risked for so small an affair as Crete, and 
Christianity might have got the casting vote in deciding 
which side interference should favor. If Russia had been 
sincere in her friendship for Greece, she might have helped 
the question to a speedy ending by giving the word to the 
Danubian provinces to rise ; but she has never desired a 
strong Hellenic kingdom, and this Comoundouros under- 
stood clearly, and that any intervention voluntarily made 
by JR.ussia would be for her own interest purely, and that, 
holding as he did the initiative in a movement of all the 
Christian races, he could, by the employment of it, compel 
Russia to favor his plans or lose her prestige with them, 
and to a great extent her moral influence. It was with this 
view that he prepared movements in Epirus and Thessaly, 
while Montenegro became agitated, and the seeds of the 
Cretan trouble seemed wafted over the whole Turkish Em- 
pire. 

Pending the question of intervention, the transport of fa- 
milies waited the arrival of the American ship, of which no 
advices came. I telegraphed to Admiral Goldsborough for 
news of her, and received reply that he knew nothing of 
any orders for Crete. Subsequent information showed that 
our Secretary of Legation at Constantinople, a Levantine, 
and, like his class in general, devoted to the Turkish Go- 
vernment, and a most rancorous and persistent assailant of 
both Mr. Morris and myself in the journals of Europe and 
America (and whom the disgraceful condition of our diplo- 
matic service permitted to assail the acts of his superior and 



E^'ect of Hellenic Politics. 1 1 7 

the declared policy of his own government), acting in the 
interests of the Turkish Government, had put himself in 
communiciation with the naval authorities by the interme- 
diation of officers attaclied to the squadron in European 
waters, and instigated the revocation of the decision of the 
Government, and, when finally the Canandaigua arrived in 
the middle of March, she had orders to do nothing in any 
way disagreeable to the Turkish authorities; and I soon 
found that the state of feeling in the navy was anything but 
favorable to the employment of our ships for humane pur- 
poses, I myself, as instigator of their discomfort, being 
treated by the officers with a degree of incivility which show- 
ed as little good-breeding as esprit de patrie, and was mani- 
fested so openly as to encourage the local authorities in their 
systematic persecution of me. With the exception of two or 
three of the younger officers, the whole wardroom broadly ex- 
pressed their sympathies with the Turkish Government, so 
that, after having persuaded Captain Strong, who sympa- 
thized somewhat with the awkwardness of my position, to 
run down to Retimo with me to look into the condition of 
the Christian families shut up in that town, I saw the Ca?ta?i- 
daigua sail, with a heartfelt desire not to see one of my coun- 
try's men-of-war again while I was on the station. The Com- 
missioner showed his appreciation of our official servility by 
ostentatiously ignoring the visit of Captain Strong, passing 
the Canandaigiia by without notice, while he visited all the 
other foreign men-of-war in the harbor. 




CHAPTER XI, 

compensate myself for the slights of my fellow- 
countrymen, and at the same time escape from 
and retaliate for the annoyances of the Turkish 
officials, I sent to Corfu for a little cutter-yacht, and until 
it came sent my family to Syra. All official intercourse 
had ceased between the Commissioner and myself, and, 
encouraged by our Secretary of Legation, who maintained 
a correspondence with the dragoman of the Commission, 
the Pasha showed his determination to drive me out of 
the island. It was forbidden to let me a house, the one 
I had having become untenable from the number of 
military hospitals gathered round it. I found it almost 
impossible to be served in the market, which was under 
official control, and every movement I made was so 
watched, and locomotion made so dangerous by the ran- 
dom discharges of the muskets of the irregulars, which were 
fired off on all occasions, and even with none, the balls 
constantly being heard passing overhead, that I deter- 
mined on passing the summer on board the Kestrel, which 
I did, running from port to port in the island, and over to 
the Greek islands, whenever the fancy took me. In this 
way I revenged myself most agreeably. My satisfaction 
was greatly increased by seeing the disgrace of my adver- 
sary, the Commissioner, who was recalled, having utterly 
failed in everything but devastation. He was replaced by 
Hussein Avni, a cautious and heavy-witted man, a good 
disciplinarian, but a most fanatical Mussulman, and so fore- 
warned of my dangerous qualities that I found, to my great 



Hussein Avni. 119 

amusement, that I was considered the head and front of the 
insuiTection. As with all the espionage they could apply, 
no act of camplicity could be discovered, I was credited 
with superhuman cunning, it never entering the heads of 
the nises Mussulmans that I had nothing to conceal, and 
that, while they were watching my house at Kalepa, the in- 
surgent messengers came in at the city gates almost every 
day. In fact, except as a witness of events, I had ceased 
to be of any importance to the insurrection; and, entirely 
unsupported by any moral or diplomatic influence of my 
own Government, and wearied of a struggle which brought 
to me but a succession of spectacles of misery and barba- 
rity, I would gladly have left the island, where the extraor- 
dinary expense of living was devouring my substance with- 
out any recompense, but that I had become in public opi- 
nion, both in Greece and Crete, so identified Avith the exist- 
ence of the insurrection that my resignation or recall Avould 
have been a danger to it in the eyes of its friends. The 
moral intervention of my ov;n Government amounted to the 
despatch before quoted, a fustian despatch from Mr. Seward 
to Mr. Morris about " the brave and suffering Cretans," 
and a buncombe resolution of Congress, in view of v/hich 
the people of the East, having to deal generally with go- 
vernments whose words have a positive value, supposed 
that we were the friends of the Cretans, and I determined 
to avail myself of the delusion, as far as my own position 
was concerned, and conform to what was really public opi- 
nion in America, confident that the Government cared no- 
thing about the matter pfo or con, The Porte threatened 
to revoke my exequatur. Nothing would have pleased me 
better, for I knew that this would compel my Government 
to do something, and Ali Pasha seemed to have the same 



I20 The Cretan Insiirrectio7i of 1866. 

opinion, for the threat was dropped. A strong pressure was 
then apphed at Washington to have me recalled, and Mr, 
Seward had consented, and decided to call me home, I was 
informed, under pretext of consultation on some public 
affairs ; but General Ignatieff, getting wind of it, telegraphed 
to St. Petersburg that I must be retained, and a telegram 
from there to Washington settled the matter, I conjecture, 
as nothing more was heard of it. This I believe was the 
extent of the part performed by the American Government, 
and, trivial as it was, it seems to me the least creditable 
pla3^ed by any government concerned. 

Hussein Avni was only the locum tenens of the Serdar 
Ekrem, Omar Pasha, whom the Porte had decided on 
sending to Crete as a final and rehable agent, his name 
being, as was supposed, so formidable as to discourage any 
protraction of the resistance. In the interregnum, Hussein 
undertook no measures against the insurrection. Ali Riza 
Pasha, being beaten at Topolia in an attempt to penetrate 
into Selinos, -where a new gathering of volunteers and in- 
surgents had been made, contented himself with ravaging 
the plain districts of Kissamos which had hitherto escaped. 
Whole villages, which had submitted without any resistance, 
were plundered, the women violated by order of the officers, 
until in some cases death ensued ; and of the men, some 
were killed, others beaten and tortured in many ways, all 
who could escape taking refuge in the caves and hiding- 
places along the shore, where they escaped by small boats 
to Cerigotto. I ran over later in the Kestrel, and saw several 
hundred of these miserable wretches, women and children 
mainly, and saw two row-boats arrive with their lading, 
so crowded that it was a marvel how they could have made 
the passage of twenty miles or more of open sea, in any 



A New Victim. T2I. 

weather. I saw one old blind man of ninety who had been 
wrapped by the soldiers in cloths on which they poured 
oil, and then, setting them on fire, left him to his fate. His 
friends came back in time to save his life, but I saw the 
broad scar of the burning, covering nearly his whole chest. 
Omar Pasha arrived on the 9th of April, and on the nth 
a body of 2,000 insurgents came down to the heights of 
Boutzounaria, and attacked the guard of the aqueduct, to 
show his Highness, apparently, that they were not discour- 
aged. They were driven back with the loss of three killed, 
the plan of attack having been betrayed by a miller in the 
neighborhood, and the troops been reinforced in the night 
before the appointed day. At the same time, a more decid- 
edly offensive strategy seemed to be adopted by the whole 
insurrection, owing to the new material brought over by the 
Arkadi, and in several places combats of comparative im- 
portance took place. The insurgent chiefs made no con- 
cealment of their satisfaction at the change in the com- 
mand, fearing tHe wiles and personal influence of Mustapha 
more than all the artillery and discipline of the Generalis- 
simo. Omar had landed with great pomp and circum- 
stance — ^horses and guns, cavalry and a staff, new and 
splendid uniforms. Amongst the others I paid my respects 
to the new victim, and found him, to my surprise, a weak, 
conceited, bombastic old man. He assured me that his 
plan and appliances were so complete and irresistible that 
within two weeks from the time he set out the insurrection 
would be crushed. I ventured to suggest that he would find 
on getting into the interior that the work was much more diflS- 
cult than he imagined, and that the neglect of the Porte to 
construct good roads when they had command of the island 
made their work very diflicult. He replied that it could not 



122 The Cretan InsiLvrectioii of 1866. 

be more difficult than Montenegro, and he had conquered 
that, etc. I left him with much less apprehension for the 
success of the campaign than I had previously entertained. 
He was a strong contrast to the quiet, concentrated, rusd 
Mustapha. 

The political intervention of Russia commenced at this 
juncture by the negotiation of a secret arrangement with 
the Viceroy, by which he engaged to withdraw his troops 
from Crete, and a division was actually embarked for Egypt 
before the Serdar Ekrem succeeded in arresting the defec- 
tion, w^hich was completed on his return from the cam- 
paign, seven months later, when a number, which, with the 
previous departure, amounted to about 10,000 men, the 
remainder of a total of 24.000 Egyptians landed in Crete, 
returned to Egyyt. The change in French policy was also 
marked by the recall of the slavishly pro-Turkish consul 
Derche, incapable either of honesty or good policy, and 
Avhose demoralization had made him worthless even to his 
own government, and the replacing of him by M. Tricou, 
a clever, quick-witted Parisian, but long in the service, and 
lately stationed at Alexandria. There seems to be little 
doubt that he was authorized to use his eyes to the disad- 
vantage of Omar Pasha if possible. [Tricou arrived just 
too late to be received by Omar before setting out, and fol- 
lowed him to Candia with the intention, if not the order, 
to follow him through his campaign ; a surveillance which 
Omar bluntly declined, to his cost, as events proved.] 

He occupied about two weeks in organizing his troops, 
receiving heavy reinforcements from Turkey, including 
some splendid-looking regiments with full ranks, and then, 
witli about 15,000 men, set out for the conquest of Sphakia. 
The Cretans, as if to reply to the new manifesto of the 



Sphakia Again. 123 

Porte, formed a provisional government, and chose Mavro- 
cordato, an able Greek administrator, and most trustworthy 
and patriotic man, as president, decreeing at the same time 
that all authority should be exercised in the name of the 
King of the Hellenes. But the difficulty, not to say impos- 
sibility, of reconciling the claims of the rival chieftains, and 
of enforcing any kind of administrative system in the 
island, deterred Mavrocordato from assuming his post, 
though the brutum fuhnen of proclamation on both sides 
still continued, the only practical question being which 
side would stand most killing. Strategy on either side was 
of trivial importance, tactics of none. The Cretans rolled 
stones and felled trees into the passes, already nearly im- 
passable, and Omar and his staff planned, on the chart, a 
campaign for a country none of them had ever seen, and 
with the greatest contempt for the judgment of those who 
knew it. Mehmet Pasha, who still retained command in 
the Apokorona, though he had been obliged to retreat to 
the seaside, advanced anew, and formed an entrenched 
camp near Vrysses, while Omar, with the bulk of the army, 
moved on to Episkopi, and waited there the arrival of the 
troops at Retimo. When all were ready, a joint attack was 
made, by Mehmet on Krapi and the Serdar Ekrem on 
Kallikrati, a much longer but less precipitous pass, which 
led into Askjrfo from the east. 

Zimbrakaki, with Veloudaki and other Cretan chiefs, and 
Soliotis of the Greeks, commanded at Krapi, and Coroneos 
at Kallikrati, and the affair ended as had all the former 
attacks, Mehmet being driven back to his camp, and Omar 
to Episkopi. These were affairs of sharpshooters en- 
tirely, where no opportunity of employing discipline for the 
attack offered, and the troops exposed themselves to a fusil- 



124 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

lade which they could not reply to. But, with the irritation 
of defeat, the Ottoman Generalissimo gave way to the most 
brutal impulses of revenge. Villages which had just sub- 
mitted, and whose people had remained within the Turkish 
lines, were put to sack, and the last outrages of war perpe- 
trated on the inhabitants. 

The rumor which accompanied the Serdar Ekrem, that 
in spite of his professions of moderation and legality (as 
opposed to Mustapha's policy) he had secret orders to 
stamp out the disaffection by the severest rigor, found 
now clear confirmation. What under the Commissioner, 
subsequent to Arkadi, was variable and overlooked barba- 
rity in the subordinates, was, under the Generalissimo, the 
law and order of things, and he himself partook of the 
plunder of the defenceless, and rejuvenated the lusts of his 
old age with the pick of the captive Cretan maidens. The 
testimony of several of the European officers in the army 
was offered me, proving that Omar Pasha dishonored even 
his adopted country by his violation of his word, by his 
depravity and his cruelty, and himself set the' example to 
his army of everything which could add to the misery and 
despair of unhappy Crete. 

It is as natural for the Turkish authorities to deny as for 
the Christians to exaggerate the atrocities committed, but 
evidence of a nature not to be rejected, or even questioned 
in its general import, establishes that the policy adopted 
was one of subduing Crete by terror, and to this end 
full license was given to the soldiery. One entry in a 
memorandum book kept by Geissler (Dilaver Pasha), 
Omar's chief of artillery, and which I had the chance to 
read, said, noting the entry into one of the villages near 
Goidaropolis : " O. Pasha ordered the division to ravage 



A New Campaign. 125 

and rape." All villages were burned, and all prisoners 
murdered or worse. The chiefs of four villages who came 
to make their submission were at once beheaded. The 
population invariably fled to the high mountains on the ap- 
proach of the troops. 

It will hardly be edifying to follow further in detail this 
barbarity; and with the general statement that the policy 
here indicated was followed throughout Omar's campaign 
unflinchingly, and that the French consul was refused 
permission to accompany Omar in his movements, that no 
civilized witness might bring his deeds to light, I shall drop 
the theme, which sickens me to recall even at this long in- 
terval. My duty then compelled me to investigate, as now 
to declare, these things, but I spare the civilized world 
and myself any further recital of the deeds of the Croat 
Pasha. 

The 6th of May a force of volunteers, commanded by 
Dimitrikarakos, landed in the eastern provinces, where up 
to that time hostihties had been very unimportant. A large 
body of insurgents quickly rallied round the volunteers, 
and, establishing their headquarters at Lasithe, they swept 
the country up to the walls of Candia. This compelled a 
new concentration of forces to meet the new emergency, 
and Omar set out, via Retimo, through Mylopotamo to 
Candia, sending word to Reschid Effendi to come to meet 
him en route. Coroneos, meanwhile, had not been idle, 
and while Zimbrakaki and Costa Veloudaki, with the Apo- 
koroniotes, some volunteers, and most of the Sphakiotes, re- 
mained to keep Mehmet in check, and profit by an un- 
guarded moment to attack him, Coroneos and his followers 
kept near the army of Omar Pasha, waiting until he should 
be entangled in tlie ravines of Mylopotamo to attack him , 



126 The Cretan InsztrrecHon of 1866. 

and when he had reached Margaritas, he was beset furiously 
by the whole body of the men of Agios Basihos and the 
Araariotes, with tne volunteers who accompanied Coro- 
neos. The Turks, shut into narrow ravines overlooked by 
bold heights, defended themselves with difficulty, and were 
soon entirely hemmed in, unable to advance or retreat. 
The fire of the Cretan rifles penetrated into every part of 
the .Turkish encampment, Omar's tent being several times 
pierced. At a council of war, called on the emergency, the 
opinion was general that the position was critical, and some 
considered it as next to hopeless. There was nothing to do 
but take shelter and wait for Reschid and his irregulars, 
who, well acquainted with the mountains and the Cretan 
method of fighting, would be able to form an advance- 
guard, and, by skirmishing vigorously, protect the march 
of the regulars, utterly helpless in this kind of warfare. 

The passage of the troops through this section was de- 
scribed to me by several eye-witnesses as anything but mili- 
tary. They cowered at the first attack, and refused to move 
forward in the ravines except when preceded by a cloud of 
irregulars to drive back the Christians, every onslaught of 
wham produced a panic ; but, as they were behind as well 
as before, retreat was impossible, and there was no alterna- 
tive to the Turks but to take to such defences as the ground 
permitted and defend themselves as they best could. The 
Albanians and Circassians were not sufficiently acquainted 
with the country, cut up with interminable ravines, covered 
with olive groves, and defended by men who knew every 
inch of the ground. The wretched Turks lost all courage, 
even that of despair, and a European officer in the Egyp- 
tian service who was present said to me that most of his 
comrades entertained no hope of escape, and Coroneos has 



Bottled Up. 127 

since assured me that if the other chiefs had responded to 
his call for help, the total destruction of the army, including 
the Serdar Ekrem and his staff, was practicable. 
' As has generally been the case in Greek wars, the jealou- 
sies of the chiefs were the safety of the Turks. Petropoula-' 
ki, a Mainote palikari of the old war, who commanded in 
Malavisi and Temenos, and watched Candia from the east- 
ern slopes of Ida, refused to come to the aid of Coroneos ; 
and when Reschid moved from the east, entered the defiles 
of Mylopotamo at Damasta, instead of throwing himself 
before the Turkish division and delaying their advance, he 
attacked them in the rear after they had gone through, and, 
though he inflicted severe losses on them and took much of 
the baggage, he rather facilitated than otherwise the junc- 
tion of the two Turkish corps, and, after a short pursuit, 
abandoned him, instead of following up and uniting with 
Coroneos, Skoulas, chief of Mylopotamo, alone kept up 
the chase, and Coroneos, warned in time of the advance of 
Reschid, despatched a small body of men to oppose his 
junction with Omar. Reschid, however, with the greatest 
obstinacy and gallantry, hammered away regardless of loss, 
and, fighting all night long, effected his junction, with 
which Coroneos's hope of botthng up Omar was lost. The 
Generahssimo embraced Reschid as his saviour, and pro- 
moted him on the spot. What made the matter still worse 
for the Cretans Avas that their ammunition was exhausted, 
and supphes did not arrive in time, so Coroneos reluctantly 
fell back, leaving the way open. The next day his ammu- 
nition arrived. 



CHAPTER XII. 

N the march forward through Mylopotamos the 
troops avenged themselves for their flight and 
losses in the most barbarous manner. Olive- 
trees were burned and cut dov/n, every house burned, and 
every luckless Christian who fell into their hands sent with 
short shrift to his account. The European officer above 
alluded to declared to me that he was an eye-witness of the 
oft-repeated incident of burning the refugees in one of the 
caves, around the mouth, of which a huge pile of green 
wood was piled, and fired while the troops hurried on, 
without waiting to see what the result might be; and so 
reached Damasta only slightly opposed, and debouched 
on the open country of Candia, 

This occupied from the i8th to the 20th of May. The 
Turkish army then concentrated near the remains of 
Gnossus, and without entering into Candia moved on to 
Pediada, where Omar established his headquarters at Cas- 
tale, near the foot of the Lasithe Mountains. He now 
announced his plan, which was to sweep round the insur- 
gent forces, and push them all westward into Sphakia, 
where he would shut them up and finish the war. That he 
entertained no such expectation, however, was evident from 
the order of his attack on Lasithe, which he made at a 
single point, so as rather to disperse than gather in the 
insurgents. The 3d of June he sent Reschid to attack the 
northern pass of Lasithe, by Abdou. The column of irre- 
gulars entered the litde plateau, which is as an ante-cham- 
ber to the great plain of Lasithe, without opposition, and 



Attack on Lasithe. 129 

his men at once camped, and began to cook their supper, 
or whatever else the desire of the bashi-bazouk might be. 
They were, in this state of confusion and security, suddenly 
attacked by the Cretans, and utterly routed and driven 
back to the plains below, leaving their dead and wounded 
on the ground. The news of the disaster followed the 
despatch announcing the entry so closely, that both became 
known in Candia that same night. Reinforcements were 
continually arriving, and the Pasha had now in the field 
for the attack 18,000 men. With these he renewed the 
attack on Lasithe in two directions, from Abdou on the 
north, and from the west by Mathea and the pass which 
was defended by the mountain called Lasithe EfFendi — a 
very strong position, but in a state of defence in no ways 
equal to its natural advantages. The insurgent force ga- 
thered in the Lasithe at this time was the largest the insur- 
rection had ever seen assembled, and is estimated by com- 
petent assistants at about 5,000, but with no head, though 
many commanders. The force was sufficiently well organ- 
ized to have defeated Omar Pasha, but, after three days' 
cautious skirmishing, the Turks penetrated on several sides, 
the irregulars turning Abdou by a difficult and undefended 
approach at the east, and the insurgents retired in disorder 
and in every direction; some by Messara into the Ida 
district, but the larger portion into Rhizo Castron, south of 
Lasithe, and the higher ridges of the Lasithe range, which 
Omar did not attempt to penetrate. 

On hearing that Omar had arrived at Candia, and was 
about attacking Lasithe, I ran down in the Kestrel to 
watch his movements from nearer, and get more reliable in- 
formation than the consular agents there generally furnished, 
as well as to convey more promptly the news to Greece 



130 The Cretmi Instirredion of 1866. 

and Constantinople, the agents only reporting back to their 
superiors at Canea. On the arrival of the first news of the 
entry of Reschid into Abdou, Omar sent off an express 
with the news to Syra and Constantinople, but when the 
later report came, of the surprise and repulse, I was able, 
to the great annoyance of the authorities, to send by the 
Austrian post steamer, which left the next day, to correct 
the advices by the new information which I received from 
the son of Reschid Pasha, who was in great anxiety for the 
fate of his father, a raid of the Christians having temporarily 
cut his communications with headquarters.' For two or 
three days the panic and confusion in Candia were ex- 
treme. 

Orders were then issued for the bulk of the army to 
concentrate at Dibaki, and Omar moved across the plains 
of Pediada and Messara, Reschid taking a line further 
west by St. Thomas and the slopes of Ida, while the troops 
who had moved further into the Lasithe country attempted 
to pass directly to the coast. Two battalions of Egyptians 
in this movement were caught in the ravines of Sime, and 
almost annihilated, leaving baggage, arms, and mules, 
loaded with ammunition and provisions, in the hands 
of the Cretans, who hung on the rear of every detach- 
ment, harassing more successfully than they had opposed 
them. 

At Dibaki the army was reorganized for the Sphakian 
campaign. It was the beginning of July when it began to 
move. The fleet had been waiting at Dibaki some time, 
and embarking the bulk of the regulars, still strengthened 
by fresh troops from Constantinople, they were landed at 
Franco Castelli, and took immediate possession of the 
heights commanding Kallikrati. The forces under Coro- 



Sphakian Campaign. 131 

neos were on their way to oppose this movement, but, mov- 
ing by land, were too late, and Zimbrakaki and his Sphakiotes 
made no opposition. Reschid, meanwhile, moved from 
Dibaki through Agios Basilios, his march being facilitated 
by the assassination of the chief of that district, which left 
the Christians without a head, and paralyzed their defence 
in great measure, though opposition enough was made to 
render his march slower than the plans of Omar had pro- 
vided, and gave time to Coroneos to get to Kallikrati, 
where he immediately commenced operations by an attack 
on Omar's positions on the hills south of the plain. He 
began the combat with forty men, who were rapidly in- 
creased to 1,500, whom he divided into two bodies, of 
which the heavier, massing unperceived on the left flank 
of the Turkish position, after the defence had been 
concentrated against the feint made by Coroneos him- 
self, charged energetically, and carried the two positions 
on the Turkish left. The ground was very favorable to 
irregular operations, rocky, with much small growth of 
trees, making artillery useless. The Cretans held the po- 
sitions taken, and in them prepared an attack for the day 
after. 

On this day the insurgent force had augmented to 2,000 
men, and the plan of operation was a slight variation only 
of that of the day before, the feint being on the left, but, 
unfortunately for it, the order to the commander who 
should have made the real attack was kept in the pocket 
of the officer who carried it until an hour after the time 
at which the assault was ordered to be made, so that though 
the diversion of Coroneos was very well carried out, and 
the Sphakiotes under him penetrated to an abattis Avhich 
had been constructed around the principal position of the 



132 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

Turkish army on a conical hill called Avgon (the egg), the 
expected flank attack was not delivered, and the troops 
who had held the positions on the right had time to con- 
centrate against Coroneos, and he was driven back. Pre- 
parations were, however, made for the third day, with forces 
still increasing, when the news that Reschid had arrived at 
Gaiduropolis, and consequently menaced their rear, demo- 
ralized the Cretans, compelling Coroneos with his volun- 
teers to fall back on Askyfo. 

Mehmet Pasha, once more attacking Askyfo by Krapi, 
while Omar's troops and Reschid with his bashi-bazouks 
passed by the mountains from Kallikrati to Asfendu, and 
so into Askyfo, had been opposed by Zimbrakaki, Soliotis, 
and the Sphakiote chiefs for three days, when, finding the 
defence concentrated at the head of the gorge, he climbed 
the hills at his right, passed over into Askyfo, took posses- 
sion of Kares, on the edge of the plain, barricading him- 
self there without attempting to advance further. Coro- 
neos, on his retreat to Askyfo, threw a force of several 
hundred Sphakiotes and volunteers behind him, and for 
several days his communications with Canea and his base 
at Vryses were cut off, when Reschid succeeded in getting 
into Askyfo and supplying him with provisions, of which 
he stood much in need, having left Vryses with six days' 
rations, and now been twelve days out without further 
supplies. Zimbrakaki had retired to the heights between 
Askyfo and Anopolis, followed by Omar's forces, while 
Reschid occupied the southeastern part of Askyfo, Mehmet 
being in the northeastern. The indefatigable Coroneos 
took position at Muri with about 800 men, and thence 
menaced the communications between the latter chiefs, and 
so effectually that Mehmet was obliged to evacuate Askyfo, 



Sphakian Campaigii. 133 

and get back to Vryses, when, falling on the rear of 
Reschid, Coroneos compelled him to fall back to Kalli- 
krati. The Greek chief then placed himself between Omar 
and his auxiliaries, and watched both, ready to attack 
either when the development of their plans should tell him 
what to do. Omar pushed on to Anopolis, and thence to 
Aradena, where he was gallantly opposed by a small force 
of Greek volunteers under Smolenski and Nicolaides. The 
Greeks, attacked in front and on both flanks, while Zimbra- 
kaki, at an hour's journey, remained idle, and .Petropoula- 
ki, a league away, guarded an unattacked pass, were forced 
to fall back, and leave Aradena to the Turkish troops, after 
a display of courage which called forth the praises of their 
enemies. But here the defences of nature stopped the in- 
vaders. The great stronghold of Sphakia, Samaria, was 
impregnable from the side of Aradena, the mountains 
hardly giving place for undisputed passage to pedestrians. 
The troops were accordingly withdrawn to the sea-side, and 
as the shore gives no passage, a detachment was carried by 
ships to the entrance of the gorge of Agios Roumeli. An 
energetic assault penetrated as far as the village which gives 
name to this valley, a distance of half a mile, but here the 
Cretans, concentrating in numbers, and aided by the masses 
of rock and torrents, stopped all further advance, and the 
troops were withdrawn ; and, their passage through Sphakia 
to Canea being barred, they were sent round by sea, leaving 
the country as hostile as they had found it, but desolated 
and ravaged as the ^^_paese giiasta" never had been before. 
The losses of the army in this campaign had been fright- 
ful. The sun of July, beating on those bare rocks with 
southern slopes, with rare and unhealthy wells, fatigues of 
climbing and battle, merciless driving and pushing to enable 



134 ^^^^ Cretan Instirrection of 1866. 

Omar to telegraph to the Sultan at Paris the conquest of 
Sphakia, had been a hundredfold more fatal to the Turks 
than Cretan bullets. Sunstrokes and dysenteries carried 
off hundreds. Amongst the deaths was that of Geissler, 
Omar's chief of artillery, in whose journal the writer read 
after his death these words : " Who could have believed 
that I could ever have assisted in the subjugation of these 
unhappy Christians ! " He had done his utmost at the 
beginning of the campaign to check the barbarities by 
which it was sought to terrify the Cretans into submission, 
and having remonstrated with Omar for one case of pecu- 
liar and repulsive atrocity, a coolness arose between them, 
which continued until Geissler's death. 

Omar reached Canea by ship August 30, not having 
even done as much towards the conquest of the island as 
Mustapha, no division of his troops having passed from sea 
to sea except by the plain of Pediada, etc. His losses 
since leaving Canea cannot be estimated at less than 20,000 
to 25,000 men — the estimate made by the most competent 
persons of the total force employed in the Sphakian cam- 
paign being not less than 45,000, while, on leaving, he him- 
self declared that he had not over 20 000 troops, all told, in 
the island, and European officers in the service declared to 
me that this was an overestimate. 

Returning for a moment to follow Reschid in his retreat 
from Sphakia, we shall so conclude this campaign. Waiting 
a day or so at Kallikrati, he seemed undecided what course 
to take, and Coroneos watched him, fearing a raid on the 
undevastated district near Kallikrati, but, urgently sum- 
moned by the Assembly to Sphakia to resist Omar, he was 
on the way to obey, when he received news that Reschid 
had broken up his camp, and was in retreat on Dibaki. 



Res chid. 135 

He instantly sent messengers to the men of Agios Basilios 
to hasten to stop the way at Halara, a most difficult pass 
of their canton, while he followed him with all the forces he 
could muster. Flight and pursuit were rapid, but when at 
Halara Coroneos overtook the Mussulmans, he found no 
force in Reschid's way, and that he had occupied the pass 
without resistance. Pursuit recommenced next day, and in 
passing by Amari, Reschid escaped an ambush of the 
Amariotes by taking an unused and difficult way in prefer- 
ence to the commonly travelled one at which they lay in 
wait for him, and, incessantly harassed, and losing men and 
baggage continually, was caught again by his Greek adver- 
sary near Melambos, in a parting fight, in which, it is said, he 
received a wound from which (or from some other cause) 
he died a few weeks later at Candia. 

This was the general result of the great expedition which 
would end the insurrection in two weeks. Nothing had 
been gained, an army wasted j and when, on October 3, 
the remnant of Egyptian troops left, there was no Turkish 
force out of gunshot of the fortresses except a small garrison 
at Dibaki, under the guns of the fleet. 

With the practical and complete failure of Omar Pasha 
to subdue the island, all hope of military success seemed to 
fail the Turkish authorities. Omar returned from Sphakia 
with his army by sea, save a body left in Selinos, who made 
an expedition on Omalos, and, after penetrating with slight 
resistance to the plain, found themselves unable to keep up 
their communications with the coast, and abruptly evacu- 
ated it again, suffering considerable loss in forcing the 
passes outwardly. The elastic system of resistance adopted 
by the Cretans, and finally acceded to by the Greek chiefs, 
wore out the Turkish forces without giving them the pres- 



136 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

tige of tangible victory. There were no fortresses to cap- 
ture, no accumulation of stores to destroy, and the very 
poverty and want of military coherence made a strength 
for the insurgents in face of the wretched strategy of the 
Turks. 




CHAPTER XIII. 

NOTHER step of the mo7-al intervention which 
the Russian Government had been so long and 
so skilfully engineering came at this juncture 
to make the cause of the Porte more hopeless. The 
negotiations with France had resulted in a kind of etitente 
on the Eastern question, by which the French emperor 
had agreed, under certain contingencies, to unite with 
the Russians in deporting the families of the Christian 
combatants. The new French agent, Tricou, had from 
the beginning shown a tendency to criticise Omar Pasha 
unfavorably, which the latter had increased by his contemp- 
tuous treatment of the new consul. Tricou had, conse- 
quently, set his agents to find out all the instances of 
Turkish barbarity obtainable — a ghastly roll, obtained from 
easily read records. It happened during the operations 
against Sphakia, which Omar nominally directed from on 
board the flag-ship of the squadron oif the coast, that news 
came in of his having blockaded a number of families in a 
cave on the sea-side and having attempted unsuccessfully 
to stifle them out (or in), and the active Murray went at 
once to make his Highness a visit, and ascertain if the ca- 
tastrophe were avertible. He obtained from the General- 
issimo a promise that the prisoners should not be attacked 
by any inhum.an appliances, and should be guaranteed 
honorable treatment on surrendering.* In the course of 
the conversation, Omar animadverted on Tricou in terms 

* A promise which Omar kept by violating: and keeping on his ship as his 
mistress the most beautiful of the young girls who surrendered. 



138 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866, 

which Murray, in narrating his visit to me, dedined to 
repeat, and which, in all their vagueness and possible 
malignity, I at once applied as a caustic to Tricou's already 
wounded pride, in accordance with a systematic policy 
to make all the bad blood possible between the Pasha and 
my colleagues. The ruse succeeded to my best hopes, and 
thenceforward the irritated Frenchman sought every op- 
portunity to punish the illustrious renegade, and his activity 
resulted in the following despatch, sent while Omar was 
still engaged in the Sphakian raid : 

(Translation.) 

Canea, July 21, 1867. 

M. LE Charge d'affaires : 

The situation grows daily worse. I have had the honor 
of notifying to you the deplorable excesses which have 
been committed in the district of Kissamos ; to-day I learn 
that massacres have broken out in the eastern part of the 
country. 

For the last month, isolated murders took place daily in 
the neighborhood of the town of Candia; the native 
Mussulmans overran the country and abandoned them- 
selves to the saddest iniquities in the Christian villages. 
These barbarous expeditions over, they would return to the 
town, and the gates opened before them to give passage to 
their bloody trophies. I had made strong complaints to 
the local authorities, but all my representations had re- 
mained without effect. Emboldened by impunity, the 
bashi-bazouks on the 12th and 13th of this month spread 
themselves over the district of Rhizo and massacred Avomen 
and children. To revenge themselyes, -the insurgents carried 
off a young Turkish girl and killed her father. The Can 



Russian Plans Ripening. 139 

dian Government, which has for a long time forbidden 
Christians to enter the town, doubtless counted upon these 
atrocities remaining buried in silence. They let them go 
on, and the irregulars could glut their ferocity entirely as 
they pleased. 

On the 17th, they invaded the villages of Humeri, Alco- 
lohuri, Aghias Paraskevi, Shilus, and a great number of the 
villages of the district of Pediada, murdering the peaceable 
and defenceless villagers, old men, women, and children. 
The consular agents of Candia unite, and wish to send 
their dragomans to the places ; but the Governor opposes 
this, and the carnage continues. 

These sad tidings have deeply moved the consular body. 
As soon as I had been informed of them I went to the Im- 
perial Commissioner, whom I found, . I must say, deeply 
afflicted, but overwhelmed with the feeling of his impo- 
tence. He no longer attempts to deny the evil, but he 
feels himself incapable of staying its progress. From all 
parts of the island the most sinister reports reach us. Wo- 
men and children wander along the shore, dying of hunger 
and exposed to the most horrible treatment. I am in a 
position to inform you, M. le Charge d'Affaires, that three 
young Turkish officers, witnesses of the barbarities which 
have taken place at Kissamos, have given in their resigna- 
tion, to avoid presiding over such butcheries. 

In so serious a situation, my English colleague and I 
thought it our duty to inform our respective governments 
in the promptest manner. We consequently drew up the 
following telegraphic despatch, which we sent this day to 
the Peirseus to be transmitted to Constantinople, as well as 
to the Cabinets of London and Paris : 

" Massacres of women and children have broken out in 



140 The Cretan Insztrj^ection of 1866. 

the interior of the island. The authorities can neither put 
down the insurrection nor stay the course of these atroci- 
ties. Humanity would imperatively demand the immediate 
suspension of hostilities, or the transportation to Greece of 
the women and children." 

The Russian and Italian consuls address an identical 
telegram to St. Petersburg and Florence. 

We cannot, M. le Charge d' Affaires, remain blind to the 
fact that from impotence the Turks passed to fury, and from 
fury to extermination. I do not hesitate to say that, if this 
useless struggle were to be prolonged, the women and chil- 
dren would have no refuge but exile or death. 

Omar Pasha continues his expedition of Sphakia, It is 
asserted that he has effected his junction with the corps of 
Mehmet Pasha, which is said to be entirely free. It would 
be very desirable that the Serdar should make himself 
master of this position as soon as possible ; it is true that 
the insurrection would be scarcely weakened by it, but this 
success might perhaps induce the Porte to order a suspen- 
sion of hostilities. 

The aviso of the Imperial navy, the Prometheus, which 
has come to relieve the Salamander, anchored on the 17th 
in the harbor of Canea. — Accept, etc. 

(Signed) Tricou. 

The consequence of the Russo-Frankish accord was that, 
on the receipt of the above despatch at Constantinople, 
the French and Russian squadrons at Peiraeus proceeded 
to Crete, and there commenced to embark the families 
gathered along the coast. This undertaking, which had 
probably as little as possible to do with humanity in its 
secret springs, was evidently concerted, and waited only 



Dissertation. 1 4 1 

the arrival of some signal like Tricou's telegram, followed 
accordingly by this preconcerted rejoinder from the French 
representative at Constantinople : 

M. Oiitrey to Aali Pasha. 

"Therapia, July 26, 1867. 

" Highness : The consul of France at Canea sends me 
the following telegram [given above]. 

" In view of such acts, which the Porte can but reprove, 
and in virtue of orders which I have received from my 
Government, I hasten to inform your highness that I have 
ordered Admiral Simon to repair to the Cretan coast with 
the ships under his orders, to receive and transport to 
Greece all the women and children who wander on the 
shores, dying of hunger, and exposed to frightful treatment. 
The mission of Admiral Simon, having no political charac- 
ter, cannot, I imagine, meet any difficulty from the Otto- 
man authorities, and I beg your highness to have the good- 
ness to instruct his Highness Omar Pasha to lend all his 
sympathy to a work of humanity." 

Which is made clearer by the extract from the despatch 
of the English charge to Lord Stanley : 

(Extract.) 

Mr. Barron to Lord Stanley (Received August 6 J. 

Constantinople, July 23, 1867. 
" The French cha?ge' d'affaires has called to inform me 
that, having received instructions from his Government to 
despatch vessels to Crete for the purpose of removing 
homeless victims of the war, whenever it should be advisa- 
ble, he deemed the last advices from the French consul at 
Canea (enclosed herewith in copy) to be such as to obHge 
him to use the discretionary power placed in his hands. 



142 The Cretan Insurrectio7i of 1866. 

On the receipt of this despatch he immediately concerted 
measures with the Russian Ambassador, who was provided 
in advance with corresponding instructions, and they both 
sent late on the 26th identical instructions by telegraph to 
their respective naval officers in the Mediterranean." 

The number of relieving ships sent to Crete in obedi- 
ence to tnis accord was four French, three Russian, followed 
by two Italian ; and, lest isolation should seem interven- 
tion, three Austrian, not over well-willed, and one small 
Prussian gunl3oat, that the now great Power might not be 
left out of the new question. 

This movement had, in my opinion, no direct effect on 
the military question, the Sphakian expedition having 
already done its worst, and begun to recoil, before the 
arrival of Admiral Simon with his ships; but it did, no 
doubt, prevent the success of the conciliatory movement 
which followed. The Generalissimo, after his return to 
Canea, about the middle of September, issued a proclama- 
tion prepared at Constantinople, offering a general amnesty 
and an armistice of six weeks, preparatory to measures of 
a softer and more persuasive character. The Turkish offi- 
cials, in their intercourse with the consuls, frankly admitted 
that force had failed, and that no hope of its more success- 
ful apphance remained. The depleted army could only 
with great difficulty, and slowly, be refilled. Reinforce- 
ments were obtained, but not enough to keep the cadres at 
their full condition, and a despatch of the English consul 
at Beyrout * attests the dread of this service which had in- 



* Acting Consul-General Rogers to Lord Stanley (Received Novemher 27A 
Beyrout, November 14, 1867. 
My Lord: I have the honor to report to your lordship that yesterday the 

^elim 



My Lord : I have the honor to report to your lordship that yesterday 
Turkish steam-frigate Peikizaa/ar, 72 guns, commanded by Captain Se 



The Last of the Victims, 143 

fected the troops in other sections of the Ottoman empire, 
while battalions in Crete mutinied and refused to labor any 
longer. 

Early in October, A'ali Pasha arrived, to put in effect the 
sober second thought of the head of Islam. The manner 
and views of the Grand Vizier impressed me with profound 
respect and sympathy — ^liis proffers seemed to me reasona- 
ble, and likely to assure to the Cretans a substantial liberty 
and reform. But they were too shrewd not to see that the 
ablest man in the Turkish empire had. only come to Crete 
to try the last resort of his persuasion, because his case was 
nearly hopeless, and simultaneously with his arrival came 
stimulating despatches from the Russian agents, encourag- 
ing the Cretans to hold out and strike now the final blow 
at the Turkish domination. They were assured by these 
despatches in the most positive terms that if they withstood 
this temptation, and refused all the conciHatory propositions 
of A'ali Pasha, their independence and annexation to Greece 
were certain. I feel confident that but for these assurances 
the scheme of A'ali Pasha Avould have been accepted, for 
the island was harrowed and ravaged and miserable to the 
last degree. The campaign of Omar Pasha had destroyed, 
according to the declaration of a European officer en- 
gaged, six hundred villages. Except in Sitia, the extreme 
eastern peninsula, there was hardly a house with its roof 
on, and the people had no means to provide new rafters. 

Bey, having embarked nearly 2,000 soldiers at this port, started direct for the 
island of Candia. 

Of the soldiers intended to be sent on this mission, I am assured that about 
ninety deserted, and most of them were Itept in close confinement till they 
were sent on board, and they openly expressed their grief at being sent oa 
this expedition. 

They are in considerable arrears of paj-.— I have, etc., 

(Signed) E. T. Rogers, 



144 ^'^^ Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

The discouragement was great, and required as counter- 
poise all the confident promises of Russia and the means 
and appliances of Greece to induce the people to decide to 
keep up the resistance. 

My own opinion was that the Cretans had better accept 
A'ali Pasha's propositions, but our minister at Constanti- 
nople wrote me to urge their rejection with all my influence, 
as the certain condition of independence. I do not be- 
lieve that our Government had any part in these instruc- 
tions or policy. Mr. Seward had at one time given me 
the fullest endorsement of my pro-Cretan views, and at 
another was ready, on the remonstrance of the Turkish 
minister, to recall me for having done what he approved 
both in myself and Mr. Morris, and abstained only on 
another application being made by the Russian Govern- 
ment. Being on the spot, and as well able to judge as any 
one, it seemed to me wisest for the Cretans to accept au- 
tonomy and peace, but I obeyed the instructions sent me 
against my own feelings. I communicated the advices of 
my minister to those whose business it was to advise the 
insurgents. I felt a confidence in A'ali Pasha which no 
other Turkish official had ever inspired me with, and a cer- 
tainty that he would act in good faith. Humanity de- 
manded peace in defiance of all politics. 

Dissensions had arisen between the volunteers and 
Cretans; and the chiefs of the former, wearied of a 
pointless and resultless guerilla warfare, and sure that 
the question was only to be setded on the continent, 
in order to hasten the preparation of movements on 
Epirus and Thessaly, one by one returned to Greece, fol- 
lowed by most of their retinues. The Cretan combatants, 



Dissert a tion. 1 45 

relieved of their families, were quite sufficient for all the 
needs of the situation, and, well armed and provided, could 
have kept up the struggle for years, if disposed. 

But the fatal bloAv to the insurrection was being prepared 
by its own friends. The Russian Government had, during 
the nuptial visit of the King of Greece to St. Petersburg, 
secured a complete ascendency over him, and immediately 
on his return to Greece it became evident that the dismissal 
of the Comoundouros ministry had been decided in that 
conclave with the execution of whose plans no motive of 
humanity ever interferes, whose deliberations no curious 
House of Commons pries into or clamoring journal opposes. 
The Russian Government had decided to take the direction 
of the insurrection, and to that end, to get rid of Comoun- 
douros and his friends, whose anti-Russian tendencies were 
too strong to be bent to the desired course, the king, 
when the moment had arrived, made a difference with the 
ministry on some trivial point, and peremptorily dismissed 
it. But the chamber, with an unexpected constancy, re- 
fused to sanction any change in the administration, and 
the Russian minister in Athens then made overtures to the 
dismissed president of the council, offering to bring him 
back to power if he accepted the programme of St. Peters- 
burg. He refused, and the chamber, unyielding, was also 
dissolved, and in the new election, in which the whole in- 
fluence of the court and throne was exerted against the 
Comoundouros party, by the most violent and illegal 
measures the deposed chief and his principal adherents 
were kept out of the new chamber, which was, to a suffi- 
cient degree, subservient ; and Bulgaris, the evil genius of 
Greece since her independence, under whose auspices at 
all times disorder and dishonesty, brigandage and pecula- 



146 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

lation, had especially thriven, became the arbiter of the 
destinies of Crete. 

At this time all means and supplies for the war came 
directly from the Hellenic treasury. Private contributions 
had never been great, and were almost exclusively confined 
to Greeks abroad — a comparatively trivial supply of food 
and clothing from America being the exception. Nearly 
50,000 refugees from Crete were dependent on the Hellenic 
Government, which, with the means supplied to the war 
committee for military operations, constituted a drain on 
the resources of Greece sufficiently alarming, yet popular 
opinion was so strong in favor of continuing the insurrection 
that no government dared seem even to be lukewarm 
towards it ; and with excellent opportunities for observing, 
I am able to assert confidently that the Hellenic people 
were ready to run all the risks of war with Turkey, rather 
than allow the Cretans to be reconquered, and that no 
government could have lived a day which did not proclaim, 
as the chief condition of its existence, the vigorous support 
of the Cretan insurrection. 

What the views of Russia were in regard to the insurrec- 
tion no outsider can, of course, say ; but they seemed to 
be in favor of only making the Greek agitation a part of a 
great scheme, having its direction at St. Petersburg. 
The only immediate change, however, in the direc- 
tion of the insurrection was the gradual suppression of 
the powers of the Cretan committee at Athens, and an 
occasional relaxation in the vigor of support, as if to try the 
condition of pubhc feeling. I judge that Russia had made 
other combinations, which made the success of the insur- 
rection as a Hellenic movement undesirable, and that she 
was gradually getting it in hand, to be able to suppress it 



Dissertation. 147 

when the proper moment came. To do this without sacri- 
ficing that influence over the Hellenes which would be so 
useful in certain contingencies, it was necessary to have a 
Hellenic instrument to do the work — hence the position of 
Mr. Bulgaris. 




CHAPTER XIV. 

N judging of such acts as the intervention of 
Russia, we have no standard but success, and 
the greater or less fitness of one of the partici- 
pants to rule ; but from the point of view from which I 
must look at it, the conduct of Russia seems to me as the 
most base, cruel, and politically dishonorable which I have 
ever known, being, as it was, practised on a wretched people, 
co-religionary, whose sufferings had been extreme, and 
which, being offered a tangible and not inconsiderable 
concession in return for its efforts, was only induced to 
refuse it from faith in Russian promises of better things. 

A'ali Pasha landed on the 4th of October, and on the 
13th Captain Murray reported to his Government : " The 
insurgents have thrown away a golden opportunity in the 
advent of A'ali Pasha, for I beheve, short of annexation, 
they might have anything they asked for. Whether the con- 
cessions would be temporary or not, is a matter of opinion ; 
but his mission has completely failed." This was clear to 
all, and in December following, the highest Christian func- 
tionary of the Turkish Government in the island .said to 
me : " We have got to come to the principality with a Chris- 
tian prince, and that before it is too late to gain even that — 
we have nothing to hope for from arms." 

Yet in a desultory way fighting went on. Omar Pasha 
went home in disgrace on the nth of November, but left 
for his successor, Hussein Avni, a plan for paralyzing the 
insurrection, by lines of block-houses running across the 
island and cutting it into three principal parts, each of 



A'ali Pasha Fails. 149 

which was then to be subdued in turn. But if the Cretans 
had been weakened by the withdrawal of the most of the 
volunteers, the Turks were enfeebled by sickness and 
extreme dejection, and the war was languidly carried on, 
the Turks maintaining themselves within their fortified lines 
and now and then making a sortie on some bold party of 
insurgents, the principal affair of the winter being an attack 
on Zurba, on the 13th of December, which was, like all 
the previous ones on the village, repulsed with disaster. 
And under such auspices — the insurrection, less disputed on 
its ground than at any previous period, holding posts with- 
in sight of Canea ; the hospitals of the island filled with 
sick troops (at and about Canea alone were an average of 
3,000 in the hospital, with unexampled mortality from hos- 
pital gangrene and fevers, and the funerals ranging from 
ten to twenty per day ) ; supplies very low, and the troops 
only paid three months' pay for the last twenty — the year 
1867 went out and the third year of the insurrection came 
in. And all through the spring and summer this state of 
things continued, neither the Government nor the insurrec- 
tion capable of making the feeble effort necessary to extin- 
guish the forces of the other. We in the Turkish lines 
suffered almost as much as if we were in a besieged town, 
for supphes from the interior were cut off, and they came 
not by sea ; meat was very dear and poor, vegetables rare 
and sometimes unattainable, so that I was shut up in my 
house for three months with a scorbutic malady. What the 
unfavored must have suffered may be conceived. Despond- 
ency and gloom were dominant in all official circles. 
Building of block-houses went on slowly, but there were not 
troops enough left in the island to garrison all that were 
planned, while on the other hand the Hellenic Government 



150 The Cretan hisurrectioit of 1866. 

gave only assistance enough to keep the insurgents from 
surrendering, and the Greeks from revolution, which would 
have been the most probable result of the open abandon- 
ment of the insurrection. In August of this year, I had 
unmistakable proof of the reality of the insurrection, having 
witnessed a skirmish between Zurba and Lakus, and nar- 
rowly escaped being taken prisoner near Theriso, .with some 
of my colleagues and several officers of the men-of-war in 
port, Mr. Dickson and a portion of our excursion party 
having been actually captured by Hadji Mikhalis' forces 
within an hour's walk of Canea. 

This season brought no change in the military position, 
there being a gradual weakening of the army until only 
about S,ooo regulars were disposable for field operation, and 
a total of less than 17,000 were reported to me by Turkish 
officers as the effective remaining from 82 battalions of 
Turkish troops, which with 22,000 Egyptians were the 
regular forces employed since the commencement of the 
insurrection, and of which only 10,000 of the latter had been 
since sent home otherwise than as sick or wounded. 

In September of 1868 I left Crete under medical orders, 
and with the impression, generally felt in Crete, that the 
Hellenic Government was about abandoning the insurrec- 
tion. On arriving at Athens, where I determined to wait 
the result, I found the Cretan committee so far convinced 
of the bad faith of the Bulgaris government that they 
meditated resignation e7i masse as an appeal to the people, 
and to discharge themselves of all responsibility for the 
impending collapse of the revolt. The Minister of Foreign 
Affairs soon after waited on me at my house to beg me to 
use my influence with the committee to persuade them to 
hold on, assuring me in the most earnest manner that the 



A 'all Pasha Fails. 151 

Government had no intention of withdrawing its support 
from the Cretans, and that it intended organizing an 
expedition on a most effective scale to reassure and 
reanimate the movement; and that it had the intention of 
directing this organization officially to ensure its efficiency. 

Meanwhile the Provisional Government of the island had 
made an earnest appeal to Coroneos to return and assume 
the command-in-chief of the insurrection, and he had pre- 
pared a plan by which he was confident of keeping up the 
war through another winter by a judicious employment of 
Cretan forces. His plan was accepted by the committee, 
but, on being laid before the Government, was rejected under 
the pretence that the sum demanded (^10,000) was be- 
yond its means, and it proceeded without reference to the 
committee to organize at more than double the expense an 
expedition under the old Mainote palikari, Petropoulaki, in 
so open and undisguised a manner that, with most other 
friends of the Cretans, I was convinced that it was meant to 
give Turkey an opportunity to imsqiier les choses by (what 
Greece had hitherto avoided) open violation of interna- 
tional law. 

Every subsequent movement of the Government con- 
firmed me in this opinion. The bands paraded the streets 
openly with the Cretan flag ; were furnished with artillery 
from the national arsenal; and embarked in two detach- 
ments for Crete, unmolested by any of the Turkish ships, 
though all the world knew when and where they were 
going ; on landing they sent back the artillery, and not only 
made no offensive movement, but did not even defend 
themselves ; the smaller detachment being cut to pieces in 
a few days, the other, fleeing in disorder to the plain of 
Askyfo, made overtures at once for surrender, carrying with 



152 The Cretan Insurrection of 1866. 

them in their defection most of the Cretans of the western 
provinces. There still remained in the eastern provinces a 
strong nucleus of insurrection. undismayed even by this 
apparent disaster, and capable of rallying 5,000 men. 
In compliance, however, with what has always seemed 
to me a preconcerted plan between the Porte and Bul- 
garis, Hobart Pasha, the new English commander of the 
Turkish fleet, waylaid the Emiosis blockade-runner in 
Greek waters on her return from Crete, and pursued her 
into the port of Syra, where he blockaded her with the 
whole squadron, leaving the coast of Crete utterly un- 
guarded, though there were still three good steamers at 
the disposal of the committee. But in the new excite- 
ment of this patent outrage on international law the 
Bulgaris government found its opportunity to withdraw 
all support from Crete, and, while public opinion was 
diverted to the not slight chances of war with Turkey, 
further supplies to the insurrection were cut off and it 
collapsed almost without notice. 

In all this shaping of events there was no disguising 
the control of the Russian Government. The insurrection 
became a menace to bring on the Eastern question, for 
which Russia was not yet ready, and which she could 
not permit to be brought on under Hellenic auspices. 
The moment could not have been more auspiciously 
chosen for Greece to carry on a war with the Ottoman 
empire, and public opinion in Greece was unanimous in 
favor of this emergency rather than abandoning Crete, 
be the risks and event what they might. The Turkish 
army was already fully occupied — a further levy of 
troops would have been perilous, and Joseph Karam 
waited at Athens the signal to arouse the Lebanon. The 



The End. 153 

Greeks had little money, but the Turks had comparatively 
less, for their army and navy had not been paid, were dis- 
couraged and mutinous, and the treasury was empty. 
Egypt was hostile, the Principalities ready to revolt. My 
own opinion then was, and is still, that if Greece had gone 
to war she had a reasonable chance of victory^-not with- 
out disasters or great sacrifices, but her history has shown 
that she is capable of enduring both the one and the 
other; and if Russia had been friendly to her in this 
crisis, success would have been most probable. The 
Bulgaris administration, its object gained in the suppres- 
sion of the insurrection, was in its turn overthrown by 
the popular indignation at the discovered trick, but when 
the diplomatic flurry had passed, and tranquillity had re- 
turned to the ^gean, we had only to see drift over to 
the shores of their kindred land the debris of one of the 
best justified and best deserving revolts against misgovern- 
ing tyranny which modern histor}' has recorded. All was 
quiet in Crete. 




HE last year of the war I had left Crete on a leave 
of absence of two months, which was extended 
indefinitely by Mr. Washburn, then Secretary of 
State, on account of the health of my family ; but in April 
my wife, broken by the hardships of our Cretan life and 
sick-bed watching ; and dejected greatly by the loss of a 
cause in which she had the most passionate sympathy, 
and by the misery of the unhappy Cretans around us, 
became insane and ended her life. 

Simultaneously, Mr. Fish, now become Secretary of State, 
removed me from the consulate at the request of the 
Turkish Government, and in June I went to Crete to hand 
over the consular effects to my successor, and, on the peti- 
tion of the Cretan chiefs still remaining in Athens, to obtain, 
if possible, some mitigation of the measures which prevent- 
ed them from repatriating themselves. I found the island 
as I had left it, in peace indeed, but the peace of destruc- 
tion and paralysis. Roads were being made, and block- 
houses being constructed, but no houses being rebuilt, and 
the roads were all military. The new Governor-General 
seemed amiable, just, and good-willed, but in Turkish dis- 
organization the best will does not go far. The subordi- 
nates of the local administration were the spies, the traitors, 
and " loyal " people of the war, with rancors to vent and 
revenges to take. There was nothing to rob the people of, 
but there remained prisons and persecutions. 

I found, naturally enough, all my efforts with the Gov- . 
emor useless, and that the condition of things made return 



A Visit to Omalos, 155 

unsafb for any one who had taken a prominent part in the 
war ; and so, despairing of finding any opening, I was about to 
return to Athens without awaiting my successor, but before 
going decided to make that visit to Omalos and Samaria 
which the insurrection had stoppevl and the state of hos- 
tihties ever since had rendered impracticable from the 
Turkish posts. 

Even when peace had been restored and not a recusant 
fugitive remained in the mountain hiding-places, the local 
authorities could with difficulty reconcile themselves to the 
idea of my going there ; and it was only after the failure 
of several petty intrigues to prevent my getting away, that 
they determined to pass to the other extreme and do hand- 
somely what they could not avoid doing. I set out in the 
dawn of a July day with an officer of the mounted police, 
a chosen and trusty man, with one private of the same 
force and my own cavass. The private rode a hundred 
yards ahead en vidette against any attack on the official 
dignity by unknowing peasant or unheeding- patrol or strag- 
gler of the faithful, and discharged his duty on the road 
to ray complete satisfaction, no countermarching troops 
daring to hold the narrow way to the detriment of the con- 
sular dignity. The lawlessness of the Turkish administra- 
tion in Crete has kept alive, more than in most of the 
Christian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, the power of 
and respect for foreign officials. Just as much as the 
unjust Governor dreads the inspecting eye and the expos- 
ing blue-book, so much the Rayah hopes from them, and 
honors the Effendi as the Turk curses the Ghiaour ; and so 
in Crete the extreme of official deference is kept up, cor- 
responding to the degree of official oppression hidaerta 
obtaining. 



156 The Year After the War. 

So, when my avant-courrier announced to the awkward 
squad of AnatoHan infantry, ragged, sullen, that the " Con- 
solos Bey " demanded the road, a savage frown of unwel- 
come gleamed through the disciplinary respect ; while the 
shouting, chattering groups of Christian peasants ambling 
along on the mules and donkeys, with their little loads of 
fowls or oil for the market at Canea, were generally ar- 
rested by the summons of the guard, and drew up respect- 
fully at the roadside, the most respectful dismounting until 
I had passed. 

The road for ten or twelve miles runs westward over a 
level plain, the ancient bed of the lardanos, by whose 
banks we know, from Homer, that the Cydonians dwelt. 
The fact that the lardanos (now called Platanos, from the 
immense plane-trees growing on its banks) now empties 
into the sea ten miles from Canea, has puzzled geographers 
to reconcile Cydonia with Canea ; but, on arriving at the 
point where the river debouches into and cuts across the 
plain, it will be seen that the new channel to the sea has 
been cut through the hills by the action, of the river, and 
that the ancient course was evidently eastward through the 
still marshy plain into the bay of Suda, passing close to the 
position of Canea. 

The roads in Crete are marked with historical associa- 
tions of all ages, as the Appian Way with recollections of 
the great dead. The town that Ave pass, near the mouth 
of the Platanos, was the ancient Pergamos, whither Lycur- 
gus, to evade the possibility of his laws being revoked, ban- 
ished himself, where he died, and was buried. The town 
which we enter as we cross the Platanos at the ford is 
Alikianu, the scene of that atrocious and perfidious massa- 
cre of which I have told the story. It is a town of half- 



Alikianu. 157 

ruined villas — some, of the Venetian days — buried in or- 
ange-trees, and so surrounded with olive groves that but 
little of it can be seen from the river. The road we must 
follow only skirts it, following the river, until it rises on a 
ridge of mountains, zigzag and undulating, up to Lakus 
The Lakiotes are accounted among the bravest of the Cre- 
tans; and though military science, flank movements, and 
artillery made their town untenable in the late insur- 
rection, it is still a formidable position. The village itself 
lies along under the summit ridge of the chain of hills 
which form a buttress to the Asprovouna, stretching north, 
with steep approaches from every side. It used to be 
a prosperous village, one of the largest in the island, 
but now its straggling houses were in ruins, two or three 
only having the roofs replaced, others having only a 
canopy of boughs laid over one end of the space enclosed 
by the blackened walls, enough to keep the dews off while 
the inhabitants slept, for rain never falls here through the 
summer months. All bespoke utter exhaustion and ex- 
treme poverty. The jaded, listless look of the people, the 
demoralization of war and exile, most of them having been 
of the refugees in Greece, the ravage and misery of all sur- 
roundings, made a picture which never has passed from my 
memory. 

In the first capture by Mustapha Pasha, Lakus was tak- 
en by surprise and a flank movement of the Turkish irre- 
gulars, the Lakiotes having only time to secure their most 
valuable and portable goods and bury the church-bell, re- 
tiring up the mountain slopes beyond, firing a few shots 
of defiance as they went. When A'ali Pasha arrived in 
Crete, he ordered the reconstruction of the church of La- 
kus, demolished by the Turks at the capture of the village, 



158 The Year After the War. 

and the primates were ordered to find the bell. Declining 
to know its whereabouts, they were thrown into prison, to 
lie until they did, a few days of which treatment produced 
the desired effect, and the bell was hung over the recon- 
structed church. That afternoon notes of compulsory joy 
sounded from the belfry, and the insurgents from the ridge 
of Zourba opposite came down to the brink of the ravine to 
ask who had betrayed the bell. Their submitted towns- 
men replied by an avowal of the modus operandi of getting 
at the required knowledge ; and the " patriots " replied, 
" Ring away. We will come and ring it to-night." And 
agreeably to promise, a band of insurgents came across the 
ravine at midnight, carried off the bell, and, hanging it on 
a ti-ee near Zourba, rang the night out. The Turkish 
guard, which occupied the block-house in the village, 
scarcely thought it worth while to risk the defence of the 
bell, if indeed they knew of its danger. 

At Lakus 1 had made my plans to breakfast and pass the 
noon-heat, but I had .reckoned without my hosts, for, on 
" pitching my tent " and sending out my cavass to find a 
lamb to roast, I found evidence of the inroads of civiliza- 
tion — I could not get one for less than three pounds ster- 
ling — about fifteen times the usual price, and a sure at- 
tempt at swindle based on my supposed necessities. For- 
tunately my escort had amply provided themselves, and 
we had bread and cheese, caviar and coffee, to stay our ap- 
petites until we should reach Omalos, where were a garrison 
and an army butcher. So I ate my modicum of what they 
gave me, smoked my cigarette, and tried to doze, while the 
chattering villagers, holding themselves aloof in remini- 
scent dread of tlie Moslem, mingled their hum with that 
of the bees from the hives near us. My " tent " was an 



Hadji Housseiiis Story. 159 

ancient mulberry-tree above, and a Persian carpet beneath ; 
and, though I tried to sleep away the time, I did nothing 
but listen to the story my cavass, Hadji Houssein, was tell- 
ing his companions of the adventure we had had the year 
before in the valley below, and which, lest he have not 
given the true version, I will tell as it happened. 

In the bottom of the valley at our feet lies the village of 
Meskla, built along the banks of the Platanos, where it is 
a pure, cold, rushing mountain brook, of which, in any other 
part of the world, the eddies would have been alive with 
trout, but in which now there are only, as in all other Cre- 
tan rivers, eels. A party of official personages in Canea, 
including her Britannic Majesty's consul, myself, the Ameri- 
can ditto, with the captain and officers of the English and 
French gunboats on the station, and an English colonel 
in the Turkish army, had made a picnic party to Meskla, 
in August of the last year of the war. The Turkish troops 
held Lakus and Omalos and the western bank of the 
Platanos down to the plain; but the insurgents still re- 
mained in possession of all the northern spurs of the As- 
provouna, from Lakus east for twenty miles, including 
Zourba; and, while we drank toasts and ate our roast- 
lamb under the plane-trees by the river, a perpetual 
peppering of rifles was going on from the hill-tops on 
each side of the valley above. Was it fighting, or was 
it fun ? I began to climb one of the nearest spurs on the 
Turkish side of the ravine to see, and, not to be suspected 
of both sides, took my way to the picket of Turkish irregu- 
lars, which, sheltered by a group of trees on -the summit, 
was firing across the valley in a desultory way. As I show- 
ed myself in one of the windings of the path to the patriots 
at Zourba, I saw the smoke-puff of a rifle on the edge of a 



i6o The Year After the War, 

ravine, and the ball glanced along the rocks within three 
feet, spattering the lead over me in a most convincing way. 
I naturally made a flank movement, which shortly degene- 
rated into the retrograde of a satisfied curiosity. 

The incident had a side interest to the whole party, for it 
showed us that the road we proposed to take might be dan- 
gerous, the more as we had a Turkish officer and his two at- 
tendants in uniform in our company. We had purposed 
following the river up still higher, and then crossing the 
ridge to Theriso. 

Consulting one of the submitted Meskliotes, who waited 
his chance for the debris of the picnic, we were informed 
that it would be very far from safe to follow our proposed 
route, which was exposed in its whole line to the chance 
of shots from the main mountain ridge ; but he offered to 
guide us by a road running along the side of the ridge fur- 
thest from the insurgents,, and where he could warn any 
outposts of them that we were coming. This road was a 
fair sample of those which existed in Crete before the war, a 
mere bridle-path scratched in the slope of a huge land- 
slide, which rose above us two or three hundred feet, and 
descended three or four times that distance into the bed of 
the Platanos. Part of it was too dizzy and dangerous to 
ride, and we led our beasts hesitating and hobbling along. 
We were soon amongst the outposts of the insurgents, as we 
had unmistakable evidence on arriving at Theriso, where 
we found a detachment of a dozen or more rough, motley- 
looking fellows, armed with all kinds of guns, and clad in 
all ways except well. They looked askance at our fez- 
wearing colonel and his two cavalrymen, but from respect 
for the consular presences respected their persons. We 
drank with them at the spring, exchanged identifications, 



Hadji Hotcssems Story. i6i 

and pursued our way down the celebrated ravine, the scene 
of two terrible disasters to the Turkish army during differ- 
ent insurrections. Nothing can be more uncomfortable, in 
a military point of view, than one of these Cretan ravines. 
Cut in the limestone rock by the glacier torrents of ages, 
zigzag in their courses, and shut between abrupt ridges, 
with no road but an unsatisfactory bridle-path, the troop 
which is incautious enough to enter without crowning the 
heights on each side as it advances is certain to be 
hemmed in, and to be severely treated by a comparatively 
small foe or exterminated by a large one. 

We had delayed too long, and, as we entered the most 
precipitous portion of the ravine, the red sunlight on the 
eastern cliffs told us that the sun, long shut from direct 
view, was sinking; and in our haste we missed the way, 
and fell into a vineyard-path, out of any line of travel. Im- 
mediately we heard voices hailing us from the hill-tops, to 
which we paid no attention, thinking them the cries of 
shepherd-boys, and continued until we found ourselves in a 
maze of vineyards, and the path and sun gone at the same 
instant. Now the hailing began with bullets. The uniforms 
of our Turkish escort demanded explanation, and as our 
guides had left us at Theriso we were helpless. To go 
back and explain was to be a better mark, and to march 
ahead, anywhere, Avas our only chance. Unfortunately, 
Hadji, who carried my hunting rifle, considered it his mili- 
tary duty to return the fire, and in a few moments, other 
pickets coming in, we had about forty sharpshooters pop- 
ping away at us in the twilight. Our further passage was shut 
by an abrupt hillside, along which we must make a move- 
ment by the flank toward the road we had lost, and direct- 
ly across the line of fire. The sound of the bullets suggest- 



1 62 The Year After the War. 

ed getting to cover, and as ail path had now disappeared 
we dismounted and led our beasts at random, no one 
knowing where we were going or should go, and only aim- 
ing to turn the point of the ridge above us, to get out of 
the fire, which was increasing, and the -pinging of Enfield 
bullets over our heads was a wonderful inducer of celerity. 
It was a verkable sauve qui pent. I saw men of war duck- 
ing and dodging at every flash and whistle in a way that 
indicated small faith in the doctrine of chances, according 
to which a thousand shots must be fired for one to hit. We 
found, at length, where the ridge broke down, a maze of 
huge rocks, affording shelter, but beyond was a deep de- 
clivity, down which in the dark we could see nothing ; 
further on again was the river, along which the road led. 
We could hear the shouts and occasional shots of a detach- 
ment running down the road to intercept us, and an- 
other coming along the ridge above us. My mule was 
dead-beat, and could scarcely put one leg before another, 
and few others were better off. A short council showed 
two minds in the party — one to lie still to be taken, with 
the chance of a shot first; the other to push on for the 
road before the insurgents reached it. The only danger 
of any moment was to Colonel Borthwick and his Turks, 
who would be prizes of war, and to me the chance of a 
fever from lying out all night. The majority, nine, voted 
with me to go on, and, abandoning mules and horses, we 
plunged, without measuring our steps, down the slope, fall- 
ing, slipping, tripping over rocks, in bogs, through over- 
topping swamp-grass, bushes (for the hillside was a bed 
of springs), pushing to strike the road before the insurgents 
should head us off, so as to be able to choose our moment 
for parleying. I knew if I could get there first, saving the 



Hadji Housseins Story. 163 

chance, that all would be well ; if a rash boy of fourteen 
saw me first, I might be stopped by a bullet before any ex- 
planation would avail. 

Tired, muddy, reeking with perspiration, bruised on the 
stones, exhausted with haste and trepidation, we won the 
race, and halted behind a little roadside chapel to gather 
the state of things. Above, we heard voices of a colloquy, 
and knew that the remainder of the party were in safe cus- 
tody, and our road was quiet. A short walk brought us 
to the outpost of the Turkish army, a village garrisoned by 
a couple of companies of regulars and a few Albanians. 
The commandant, a major, was outranked by Borthwick, 
who ordered him at once to send out a detachment to res- 
cue Consul Dickson and his companions. The poor ma- 
jor protested and remonstrated, but in vain. " It was dan- 
gerous," he said ; but the colonel insisted, he ordered out a 
detachment, and then called for pipes and coffee, after 
which, under a heavy escort, we started for Canea. Borth- 
wick obtained a battalion of the regulars in garrison, and 
started next morning at early dawn to rescue our friends ; 
but no persuasion could induce the Turkish commander to 
enter the ravines. He posted his troops along the over- 
looking ridge and waited in ambush. I have it on Borth- 
wick's word that, while the troops were lying concealed, 
under orders to keep the most profound silence, a hare 
started up at the end of the line, and the Turkish comman- 
der instantly ordered the first company to their feet, and 
to make ready, and was about to give the order to fire 
when a hound of the battalion anticipated the volley by 
catching the poor beast and despatching him on the spot. 

Meanwhile, Dickson and his companions were in the 
hospitable hands of a party of Hadji Michali's men, and at 



1 64 The Year After the War. 

about eight a.m. came down the road into view of the am- 
bush, escorted by a guard of honor of insurgents, none the 
worse for their adventure, and bringing back our beasts 
and baggage ; but nothing would induce the Turkish offi- 
cer to go the mile separating him from the insurgent out- 
post which had fired on us. 

While Hadji told his story to his admiring companions 
(he was an excellent raconteur, and put the whole of his 
barbaric soul into the narration, though his respect for the 
Efifendi kept his voice low and quieted a little his camp 
manner), one or the other of the three made my cigarettes 
and brought me fire, and only when the sun began to sink 
from the meridian did we move on. 

As we passed the blockhouse, I found that the General- 
in-Chief had preceded me, and given orders that the honors 
due to a consular personage — the same as those paid to a 
superior officer in their own army — should be carefully ob- 
served, and so we had the whole garrison of each block- 
house on the way out at the " Present arms !" The road 
not only zigzags going from Lakus to the plain of Omalos, 
but ma'kes such ascents and descents as well accounted for 
the fruitlessness of so many attempts to enter the plain, 
which is a sort of portico to Samaria. But now a fair 
artillery road followed the ridges up to the very plain, and 
blockhouses covered with their fire every point where an 
ambush could be made, and those little glens, famous in 
Cretan tradition for extermination af Turkish detachments, 
will never again help native heroism against organized con- 
quest. We passed, in one of the wildest gorges through 
which the road passes, a blockhouse perched high on a 
hill-top like an eyrie, a peripatetic atom on the parapet of 
which caught my eye, as a wild goat might ha\-e done 



The Plain of Omalos. 165 

amongst the cliffs around. As we came into sight, looking 
again, I saw the garrison swarming down the hillside 
amongst the rocks like ants, wondered what they were at, 
and rode on, when at another turn the officer said, " They 
salute, Effendi!" I looked around, and, only on his indi- 
cation, saw drawn up in rank, hundreds of feet above me, 
a Une of animalcules, which, by good eyesight, I could 
perceive was the whole garrison presenting arms, and they 
so continued presenting until, after turn upon turn of the 
road, they disappeared from view definitively, when I sup- 
pose they swarmed back to their fastness. ^ 

We passed through the ravine of Phokes, where Hadji 
Michali once caught a small detachment which incautiously 
attempted to penetrate to Omalos. I had heard the story 
of the fight, told at the time by an Albanian who was in 
it, in a brief but graphic way. The Christians waited in- 
visible, he said, till the troops were in the bottom of the 
ravine, and then began to fire from many directions. The 
troops stopped, made a show of resistance, and then broke 
and made for the blockhouse at Lakus ; " and those who 
couldn't run well never got there," he interjected laconi- 
cally. He frankly admitted that he was so far in advance 
that he saw very little actual fighting, and made no halt, 
nor did any others, Mussulm.an or Christian, till they ar- 
rived -at the door of the blockhouse, which he was surpris- 
ed at their shutting in time to keep out the Christians. 

It was well into the afternoon when we entered the plain 
of Omalos, evidently a filled-up crater, its level about five 
thousand feet above the sea. The snows and rains of 
winter and spring flood it, and as no stream runs from it 
the waters disappear by a Katavothron — a gloomy Ache- 
rontic recess — into whose crooked recesses the eye cannot 



1 66 The Year After the War. 

pierce, and down whose depths is heard a perpetual cavern- 
ous roaring of water. 

In the plain was no vestige of human habitation visible, 
except the tents of a battalion of regulars, and a two-story 
blockhouse on a spur of hill which projected into the 
plain. We rode into the camp, and were received with 
emphasis by the Pasha, who, with true Eastern diplomacy, 
expressed unbounded, surprise at my visit, " so entirely un- 
expected ;" and, learning the result of my attempts at feed- 
ing in Lakus, called to the mess-boy to bring me the 
remains of the breakfast, apologizing abundantly, and 
informing me that I should be expected to dine with him 
and the commander of the post at eight, The residual 
breakfast, supplemented by a plate of kibaubs, the mutton- 
chop of the East, despatched; the ceremonial pipes and 
coffee finished, and the more than usually complimentary 
speeches said, the shadows meanwhile falling longer on 
the plain ; I accepted the Pasha's offer of a fresh horse, 
and rode across to the famous descent into the glen of 
Samaria, the Xyloscala, so-called from a zigzag colossal 
staircase made with fir-trunks, and formerly the only means 
of descent into the glen. There was a detachment of 
troops building a blockhouse to command the upper part 
of the glen, and the commander kept me salaaming, coffee- 
taking, etc., until I saw that the sunlight was getting too 
red to give me time to explore the ravine, and I contented 
myself with a look from the brink down into the blue 
depths. 

I dorjbt if, in the range of habitual travel, there is an- 
other such scene. It was as if the mountains had gaped 
to their very bases. In front of me were bare stony peaks 
7,000 to 8,ooD feet high, whose precipitous slopes plunged 



The Xyloscala. 167 

down unbrokenly, the pines venturing to show themselves 
in increasing number as the slope ascended, and ended in 
a narrow gorge. At the side, the rock rose like the aiguilles 
of Chamouny, cloven and guttered, with the snow still 
lying in its clefts, and broad fields of it on the opposite 
eastern peaks. I looked down through the pines and 
cedars that clung in the crevices of the rocks below me, 
and the bottom of the glen looked blue and faint 
in their interstices. The Xyloscala, destroyed by the 
insurgents at the beginning of the insurrection, was re- 
placed by a laborious zigzag road, which sidled off under 
crags, and came back along slopes, blasted out of rock, 
and buttressed up with pines, seeming to me, where I stood, 
as if it finally launched off into mid-air, and would only 
help another Daedalus into the mystery of the labyrinth of 
pines and rock gorges below. 

As I watched, the flame of the sunlight crept up the 
peaks across the glen, the purple-blue shadow following it 
up, changing the snow-fields from rosy to blue, and the 
peaks of pale-gray rock to russet, as the day died away. 
The chill of night reminded me to put my overcoat on. 
We rode back across the plain in the twilight, accompanied 
by the building gang, whose polyglot murmur was as 
cheerful and full of mirth as though they were peasants 
going home from the vintage. 

Nothing can surpass the good-humor and patience of 
the Turkish soldier. Brutal and barbarous they doubtless 
{were v/hen their fanaticism and the rage of battle united 
to excite them, but in camp and in peace I have found 
them always models of the purely physical man. 

Our dinner was luxurious, and in the true Eastern man- 
ner. The Pasha, the Bey commanding the place, and his 



1 68 The Year After the V/ar. 

aide-de-camp made four ^vith me, and one dish, placed in 
the middle of the table, served our fingers or spoons ac- 
cording as the viand was dressed, each one of the four 
scrupulously adhering to his quadrant of the copper circle. 
The dinner was almost interminable ; it was dark and cold 
when the end did come. 

The soldiers, gathered round their camp some half a 
mile away, had eaten their suppers and were at ease, the 
shouting of their merriment coming to us occasionally 
above the general hum. Presently we saw them taking 
fir-branches, and, each lighting one at the nearest camp- 
fire, come running to us at full speed, making a long mad- 
cap procession of torch-bearers, the pitchy fir giving out 
an immense flame ; and, making for the headquarters, fol- 
lowed by the battalion band playing, they threw their 
branches in a pile on a level space before the Pasha's 
tent, and then, turning to the right and left, sat down in a 
semicircle open towards us. A detachment was told off 
to keep up the fire, and a sort of glee club, accompanied 
by rude instruments, drums beaten by the hand, and a kind 
of flute and mandolin, commenced singing at the top of 
their voices the plaintive monotonous songs which all 
who have been in the East know. 

This was the overture to a terpsichorean and dramatic 
entertainment most unique and amusing. The programme 
opened with a dance of Zebeques, the barbarous race who 
occupy the country behind Smyrna. They are wrapped 
in a sash from the armpits to the hips, with a sort of baggy 
knee-breeches, and bearing long knives thrust crosswise 
through their sashes. They formed a circle, and began a 
movement which seemed like a dance of men in armor, 
half stage-stride and half hop. The music struck up an 



Dance of 'the Zebeqties. 169 

appropriate air, and the dancers, joining in the song, cir- 
cled slowly two or three times in the same staid and 
deliberate manner, then, drawing their knives, brandished 
them in time, quickening their pace, and hurrying around 
quicker and quicker as the song grew more excited, when 
they finally came to a climax of fury, rushing In on each 
other at the centre of the circle as if to cut each other 
down. But the raised knives were arrested by the oppos- 
ing empty hands; and, the paroxysm passed, the song 
died down to its lower tone and moderate time, and the 
dance began a new movement, each dancer thrusting his 
knife into the ground at the centre, and then repeated the 
quickening circles ; this time, rushing, at the climax, on 
their knives and drawing them from the earth, they threw 
themselves on an imaginary enemy outside the circle, and, 
having hypothetically demolished him, returned to their 
gyrations, varying the finale by lifting one of the company 
into the air on their hands, and dropping him simultane- 
ously with their voices. This lasted half an hour. 

After an intermission, in which the soldiers, unawed by 
the presence of the Pasha, laughed and joked and shout- 
ed to their content, a soldier entered the circle dressed as 
an Egyptian dancing v/oman. He was one of the tallest 
men in the regiment, capitally travestied, and all who have 
seen the dance of the Almah can imagine the bursts of 
laughter with Avhich his grave, precise imitation of one of 
them was received by the circle. I have never seen any- 
thing more exquisitely ludicrous. His figure seemed lithe as 
a willow-wand, and he tv/isted and bent, and bowed and 
doubled, with the peculiar expression of physique which 
seemed impossible to any other than the slender Egyptian 
girl. 



170 TJic Year After the War. 

Roars of applause followed this performance, and the 
next was a pantomhne — " The Honey-Stealers." Two 
men enter dressed as peasants, one carrying a gun on his 
back, and begin groping about as in the dark, run 
against each other, stumble and fall, and finally, by much 
listening, find a box, which had been placed to represent 
the hive. The thief lays down his gun to be more free in 
his- motions, and a soldier runs into the circle and car- 
ries it off. Enter presently a third honey-seeker, blacked 
to represent a negro or some diabolical personage, it was 
impossible to say which, and, stumbling on the other two, 
an affray ensues, in the course of which the bees get disturb- 
ed, and come out in swarms, the luckless black getting the 
lion's share of the stings. At this moment an alarm is giv - 
en, and the gunner misses his gun, upon which he falls on 
the black as the thief, and between the stings and the 
blows the intruder expires, the play ending with the efforts 
of the two living to carry out and dispose of the one dead, 
interfered with greatly by a spasmodic life remaining in 
the members, which refuse to lie as they are put. But this 
finally subsiding, the body is satisfactorily disposed of, and 
the pantomime gives way, amid the most uproarious laugh- 
ter and applause, to a Circassian dance. The dancers 
were few, and the dance tame, and, not meeting any ap- 
preciation, gave way to a repetition of the Zebeque salta- 
tions, of which they seemed never disposed to tire. 

The entertainment lasted till eleven o'clock, when, each 
J soldier taking a branch of fir, the actors and audience 
raced off like a demoniac, festival breaking up, the band 
following with a blare of trumpets and bang of drums, 
and we were left to our dignity and the dying embers 
of the theatre fire. 



Descent of the Xyloscala. 171 

Although in July, the night was so intensely cold that, 
sharing the Pasha's tent, and with all the covering he could 
spare me, in addition to my own Persian carpet over in- 
stead of under me, I was almost too cold to sleep, and the 
morning found me well disposed to put my blood in mo- 
tion by vigorous, exercise. Coffee served, we rode over 
to the Xyloscala, and, after more coffee-and-pipe compli- 
ments, we began the descent of the new zigzag road. It 
was so steep that no loaded beast could mount it, and it 
took me two hours' walk to get to the bottom, where the 
road straightens and follows the river, here a dancing, gurg- 
ling stream, rushing amongst boulders and over ridges, un- 
der overhanging pines, as though there were no tropics and 
the land had not had rain for two months. The whole 
gorge was filled with the balsamic odors of firs and pine, 
which covered the slopes wherever the rock would give 
them place ; and above that, bare splintery cliffs overhung 
the gorge, so that it seemed that a stone Avould fall three 
thousand feet if thrown from the summit. A few Turkish 
soldiers, lazily felling or trimming pines for the blockhouser, 
were the only signs of humanity we saw. Above, in the 
pines, we heard the partridge's note, as the mother called to 
her young brood to follow her. The gorge widened to a glen ; 
the slopes receded slightly, and then, after another hour of 
walking, we came to a sharp turn in its course, where the 
high mountains walled up the glen to the east with a sheer 
slope of five or six thousand feet from the peaks to the 
brook bed, and the rocks on each side shut in like the lintels 
of a doorway. Here is the little village of Samaria, so long 
the refuge of the women and children of this section of 
Crete, and where, so long as arms and food lasted, a few 
resolute men might have defended them against all comers. 



172 The Year After the War. 

I doubt if in the known world there is such another for- 
tress. No artillery could crown those heights, no athletes 
descend the slopes; while the only access from below is 
through the river-bed, in one place only ten feet wide, and 
above which the cliffs rise perpendicularly over a thousand 
feet ; the strata in some places matching each other, so 
that it seems to have been a cloven gorge — the yawn of 
some earthquake, which suggested closing again at a future 
day — and for two hours down from the glen there is no 
escaping from the river course, except by goat-paths, and 
these such as no goat would care needlessly to travel. 

Pashley has described the village of Samaria, and its mag- 
nificent cypresses and little chapel, as they are now. No 
destruction, no sacrilege, has entered there ; and perhaps 
this is the only church in Crete, outside the Turkish 
lines of permanent occupation, which has not been dese- 
crated. The roof of the chapel is made of tiles, which 
must date from the early Byzantine Empire. 

The river below here, the St. Roumeli, is a rapid perennial 
stream, which at times of flood shuts off all travel by the 
road. Lower down is a tiny village of the same name as 
the river, in a gorge into which only an hour's sunlight 
can enter during the day — damp, chilly, and aguish — the 
residence of a half-dozen families of goat-herds. Pashley 
identifies a site near the mouth of the river as that of Tar- 
rha, the scene of Apollo's loves Avith Acacallis, who, if bred 
in this glen, must have been of that icy temperament which 
should have best suited the professional flirt of Olympus. 

To travellers who care to visit Samaria, I would give the 
hint to leave their horses at Omalos, and have a boat to 
meet them at the mouth of the St. Roumeli, as the ascent 
is long and painful, even by the new road, which, since I 



Xyloscala. I 'j^ 

saw it the torrents may have demolished. They may thus 
visit the Port Phoenix of St. Paul, which lies a few miles to 
the eastward, and landing at Suia, west of St. Roumeli, 
have their horses come down by the pass of Krustoghera- 
ko, and so return by way of St. Irene — a very wild pass 
of the Selinos mountains — to Canea. 

We had made no such provision, and so we were oblig- 
ed to toil back in the intense heat of the July sun beating 
down into the gorge, and, arriving past noon, to be refresh- 
ed by sherbet and cofifee by the hospitable commander of the 
station at Xyloscala, the snow of the sherbet being brought 
from the opposite cliff two hundred yards away, but an 
hour's climb to get to it. The commander was a more in- 
telligent man than it is usual for Turkish officers to be, and 
he related how during the insurrection he had led a de- 
tachment round to the top of the opposing cliffs, and how 
when they got there they were like the twenty thousand 
men of the King of France, and had to come back by the 
way they went. 

However, they have now a blockhouse at the Xylosca- 
la, another at Samaria in sight and signalling of it, and a 
third at St. Roumeli, so that, for the future, there need be 
no doubt as to who holds the Heart of Crete. 

The night's discomforts had been too great to allow me 
to spend another in Omalos, so, after a slight detour to 
look at the immense wild pear-trees which grow on the 
plains, we rode directly back to Canea, accompanied by 
the Pasha. Meeting the priest of Lakus by the way, I 
gave the village a vicarious berating for having in such an 
ungrateful manner refused hospitahty to a man who had 
been their advocate and friend so long, and whom they 
had obhged to go back to their enemies and his for a din- 



2 74 ^^^ Year after the War. 

ner. He seemed much ashamed, and the day after 1 
received a profound apology from the primates pleading 
ignorance of my personality. 

I improved the acquaintance with the Pasha (ISIehmet 
Ali, " the Prussian," so-called from his race, though he 
was brought up from boyhood as a Mussulman), whom I 
found more intelligent and liberal than any Turkish offi- 
cial I had met with, except A'ali and Server Efifendi, to 
introduce the condition of the chiefs of the insurrection 
remaining in exile, many of them old and worn out, afflict- 
ed with the nostalgia which mountain people know so 
well, and ready to submit unreservedly to the government. 
A nominal amnesty had been granted, relieving all from 
any poHtical prosecution, but not from the civil suits for 
damages, etc., which might be brought against the chiefs 
who had taken sheep or cattle or destroyed any property. 
Two or three of the chiefs who had returned had already 
been thrown into prison on suits of this kind, and as the 
complainants were always adherents of the government 
through the war, and all the minor officials were of that 
class whose loyalty had been beyond question from the 
beginning, a civil suit had pretty much the same color as a 
political persecution. This state of things effectually pre- 
vented the return of any of the prominent personages of 
the insurrection, who, living in exile, were reasons of the 
strongest against the restoration of tranquillity, and made 
a convenient appliance for agitation and renewed strife 
on any disturbance of the political atmosphere of Europe. 

My only interest was the restoration of the island to 
such peace as was possible, and this Mehmet Ali compre- 
liended, and, throwing aside all hostility, he entered into 
the discussion of the positions, and on a subsequent inter- 



At Constantinople. 175 

view begged me to go to Constantinople and place the 
matter before A'ali Pasha, to whom he gave me a letter of 
introduction. 

I accordingly went to Constantinople, and was receivec 
in the kindest and most considerate manner by the Granc 
Vizier, to whom I stated at length my ideas of the diffi 
culties of the pacification, and at his request made a me 
moir of all the facts and motives involved, with a descrip 
tion of the class of men to whom was entrusted the 
carrying out of the measures by which the Porte had hoped 
to conciliate the Cretans, embittered political and religious 
adversaries, full of wrath at the losses and indignities they 
had suffered, and more anxious to avenge their own 
wrongs than to secure the true interest of the Porte. He 
begged me to wait until he could send to Crete and obtain 
a report on my memoir, and, as he found on its receipt that 
my assertion was just, he promised to correct the abuses 
of administration, and proposed to me to go to Crete to 
superintend the carr}ing out of the measures which seemed 
necessary to restore the confidence of the late insurgents, 
pledging himself to accord complete immunity to any 
individuals whom I should designate as possessing my con- 
fidence, and offering me a stipend more than sufficient for 
all my needs in the service. I knew that so long as he 
was Grand Vizier I could depend on the fulfilment of 
these promises, but, in the event of any change of admin- 
istration, the understanding between us would fail as be- 
tween his successor and myself. I demanded, therefore, 
a comprehensive measure securing all the insurgents from 
civil suits on account of acts of war committed during the 
insurrection, as a condition of my acceptance of the official 
position thus created for me. This the Grand Vizier 



176 The Year after the War, 

declared the government could not grant without assum- 
ing all the personal liabilities thus discharged, which he 
was not wiUing to recommend, and so, after several inter« 
views and thorough discussion, I was obliged to decline 
the offer made me, much to my regret, for the islanders 
had ever a place in my regard, which, with the interest of 
common suffering and loss, the years of advocacy of rights 
kept back and redress denied, and perhaps the personal 
attachment I had found for me and mine in so many of 
them, disposed me to make any effort in my making ta 
secure their good. But to engage my faith and influence 
with them on such uncertain grounds as the continuance 
in power of a Grand Vizier, or the maintenance of harmony 
between myself and the local administration, was too great 
a risk for a prudent man, unwilling to engage others in a 
position from which he might not have the power to extri- 
cate them. 

It was with such a pain as the waiting of my own sen- 
tence of exile would have given me that I went to meet 
the old captains on my return to Athens, and told them that 
there was no hope of their repatriation through ray efforts 
at least. I never shall forget the silent despair in the face 
of old Costa Belondaki, tall and straight under his seventy- 
odd years, white-haired, and meagre, but alert as a man of 
forty, as he turned from me when he got his sentence. As 
with his elder compatriots, the mountain nostalgia fevered 
him and the idle exile broke his spirit, but. I could give 
him no hope that in his day European civilization or 
Turkish administration would be wise enough to economize 
his devotion to his country, and make use of rather than 
crush the spirit which makes Crete rebellious while its 
government is criminal. 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 



[Translation.] 

PETITION FROM THE LATE CRETAN GREEK 
ASSEMBLY TO THE SULTAN. 

To His Imperial August Majesty, our Sovereign 
Abdul Aziz Khan. 

Majesty: We, the humble undersigned, having been 
specially delegated by the whole Christian population of 
Crete to avail ourselves of the benevolent and philanthro- 
pic intentions which the Imperial Government have at 
all times evinced towards this island, now take the 
liberty to lay at the feet of your Imperial Majesty the 
following humble prayer, in the hope that the same may 
be favorably acceded to : 

I. And in the first place, we humbly pray to be relieved 
from the exorbitant duties levied on all articles of food 
since the 5'^ear 1858 up to this day. Contrary to the con- 
cessions made to us, verbally and in writing, not only 
have the duties in question been increased, but new ones 
have been added, namely, the duties on salt, tobacco, 
snuff, wine, and spirits, on land rents, porterage, on sales 
of real and personal property, on sales of animals in gene- 
ral, on weighing, on stamps (which last are particularly 
heavy), those on dyeing, on sales of fish and meat, etc., 
and, finall}^ various others which are onerous and unjust. 

We are, moreover, able to prove by statistical accounts 
that within the last two years we have paid what, with 
duties and taxes, would exceed the amount of our in- 
comes. Above all things, then, the system ot taxation 
requires imperial solicitude, like unto the care a father 
would bestow on his dutiful children. The mode of levy- 
ing duties also requires reform. 

The system of farming in operation is not only vexa- 



1 80 Appe7idix. 



tious and perplexing to the population, but is also baneful 
to the Imperial Government, inasmuch as the farmers, 
being bound in sureties, one for the other, at the time of 
the sale of the articles by public auction incur greater re- 
sponsibility than they are able to meet when their obliga- 
tions become due. Hence they oppress the taxpayer by 
fraudulently exacting more than they ought, while, on the 
other hand, they often quit the island secretly, thus both 
damaging their sureties and entailing loss on the public 
treasury. 

The unequal system of levying the taxes in all the pro- 
vinces of the island, which is contrary to the spirit of the 
Tanzimat published by the Imperial Government, and 
which latter secures equal rights to all your Imperial Ma- 
jesty's subjects indiscriminately, also requires amending. 

We humbly pray Jo^xx Imperial Majesty that the district 
of Sfakia, hitherto exempt from taxation owing to the 
barrenness and sterility of its soil, may continue to enjoy 
the same privilege. 

2. We humbly submit, for the consideration of your Im- 
perial Majesty, the utter want of means of communication 
throughout the interior of the island, and the absence of 
bridges, v/hereby the conveying of produce from one part 
to another is materially impeded, and many persons are 
annually drowned in the rivers. 

3. We humbly venture to submit to your Imperial Ma- 
jesty that the concessions granted to us by your illustri- 
ous predecessor in 1858, through the medium of the dis- 
tinguished delegates sent hither, be put into execution. 

It is true that we possess a Demogerondia, Councils, 
and Heads of Communities ("Ephoria"), but when we are 
called upon to exercise the right of election, our charter, 
which to all appearances exists, becomes in fact a dead 
letter. We venture to suggest that the last Regulation, 
which refers to the mode of electing the members of the 
Demogerondia and Councils, is defective, and therefore 
requires modification. 

4. We beseech your Imperial Majesty graciously to con- 



Appendix. i8i 

sider the evils to which we are subject in consequence of 
the possessors of oil stores assuming to be monej'^-lenders, 
but who are, indeed, monopolists, thus selling the produce 
of the island at half its value. 

As it frequently happens that the crops fail, we are com- 
pelled to pay double the price, having under pressure 
already effected the sale of such produce. 

We trust, therefore, that this system be abolished, and 
a bank duly established, for which latter the Hatti-Huma- 
youn duly provides in its 29th paragraph. 

5. We venture to submit to the paternal solicitude of 
your Imperial Majesty the deplorable condition of the 
local tribunals. Unprovided as these are Avith a general 
code, the form of procedure observed therein is necessa- 
rily irregular. In corroboration of this allegation, we 
assert that many have been persecuted, while no redress 
has been granted to those who have so suffered. We are 
enabled to enumerate various abuses which have occurred 
in every province. Hence, every branch of these lav/- 
courts requires amendment, so that on a sentence being 
awarded no undue favor shall be shown to the stronger 
party, or the creed of the individual be made to serve as 
a bias, as happened to some of the inhabitants of Kritza, 
Lasithe, and others. In that affair the Khaniollis family, 
having at one time held the produce of "malikianeh" or 
the tithes, presumed to consider themselves sole proprie- 
tors of that privilege, and went so far as to take posses- 
sion of half of the property of Kritza, and nearly the whole 
of that of Lasithe, and some other. In consequence of 
such a proceeding, the inhabitants of the last-quoted vil- 
lage incurred considerable expense in the defence of their 
rights, and otherwise suffered grievously. Examples of 
this kind are not wanting in the Provinces of Ketimo and 
Canea. 

Moreover, the sentences of the local tribunals used for- 
merly to be drawn up in Turkish and Greek ; but nowa- 
days, although the vernacular be modern Greek through- 
out the island, no judicial award, or any other official 



1 82 AMeitdix. 



document, must be written out in Greek.but merely in Tur- 
kish ; a fact at once perplexing to both parties at suit, as 
also to the judicial and other administrative offices. 

We consequently entreat of your Imperial Majesty that 
the use of the modern Greek and Turkish languages be 
freel)'- permitted to all classes. 

At the Mekhemeh the testimony of a Christian is held 
invalid against that of a Mohammedan. This is contrary 
to the letter and spirit of the Hatti-Humayoun, which re- 
moves all legal disabilities from the non-Mussulman sub- 
jects of your Imperial Majesty. 

6. From your Imperial Majesty we look forward with 
hope and confidence to obtain our personal liberties. At 
present, this depends entirely upon the discretion of the 
Honorable Governors and officers charged with the Impe- 
rial Government. A simple pretext is sufficient to cause 
the imprisonment of the most respectable man, and with- 
out sentence being awarded to him he may be detained 
there for an indefinite period. 

7. We humbly request the attention of your Imperial 
Majesty to the want of schools in the villages belonging 
to the three provinces, and we pray that any teacher, ir- 
respective of his nationality, be allowed to exercise his 
profession in the provinces as well as in the towns, and 
that the hospitals may be properly looked after. 

8. Another drawback which impedes the prosperity of 
our island is the closing of the numerous ports with which 
Nature has so bountifully supplied it; and while in all 
countries of the world commerce has been materially de- 
veloped by the reduction of duties, we are obliged, after 
long journeys, and after being exposed to the inclemency 
of the seasons, to convey our produce to one of the three 
principal fortresses of the island. The opening, therefore, 
of all the ports for the free importation and exportation 
of produce and general merchandise would greatly contri- 
bute to our well-being. 

9. The liberty of worship, in virtue of the provisions of 
the Hatti-Humayoun, exists only byname in Crete, since, 



4ppcndix. 183 

on a Greek becoming Mussulman, he is allowed to remain 
in the island, and inherit property; whereas if a Turk be 
converted to Christianity, he must forthwith quit the 
island, and forfeit all his rights. 

10. Majesty ! Similar griefs we, two years ago, took the 
liberty of submitting to the clemency of yowx Imperial 
Majesty, when were added such disproportionate duties 
and taxes on food, arid when the privileges conceded to 
us in 1858 were violated ; but unfortunately, and contrary 
to every hope, we were not listened to, and although even 
to-day we may have been obliged from higher motives to 
assemble, in order to give utterance to our grievances, 
we hope that for such reason we shall not be considered 
disturbers of the public peace, such imputation the local 
Governor-General, in his Excellency's proclamation of the 
28th of April last, having ascribed to us. 

On the other hand, perceiving as we do warlike prepa- 
rations, while our gathering has altogether been a peace- 
ful one, and presuming that the same has been misrepre- 
sented to the Imperial Government, we entreat of your 
Imperial Majesty a general pardon for all those who may 
have taken part in the present popular movement. 

With a view to an impartial investigation of all the 
above-stated grievances on the part of your Imperial Ma- 
jesty's faithful subjects in this island, we venture to sub- 
mit that an upright person be sent hither for the purpose. 

We beg leave to express a hope that your Imperial Ma- 
jesty may take pity on this poor people, who suffers so un- 
justly, and who implores that its prayer may be soon 
transmitted to your Imperial Majesty. 

From this day we raise our voices for the long life and 
happiness of your Imperial Majesty, and we shall never 
cease to hope for an improvement in our condition under 
the powerfu- a;gis of the Imperial Government. 

Canea, May 14 (26), 1866. 

The most obedient and humble subjects repre- 
senting the Christian population of Crete. 
(Here follow signatures.) 



1 84 Appendix. 



[Translation.^ 

TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN OF GREAT 
BRITAIN. 

Madam : The undersigned representatives of the Pro- 
vince of the Island of Candia venture to place the present 
petition at the feet of your Majesty, addressing at the 
same time a similar one to the sovereigns of the two other 
protecting powers of the Hellenes. 

The inhabitants of Candia, having taken an active part 
with the whole Greek race in the bloody war of indepen- 
dence, which, begun in 1821, has continued through many 
years, succeeded, at great sacrifice, in making themselves 
masters of the island and of Grambousse, one of its prin- 
cipal fortresses. 

Consequently, they hoped that, enjoying the same 
rights as their brethren of the Continent of Greece, their 
efforts would have been crowned by the consecration of 
their independence, but the three Great Powers in their 
wisdom decided otherwise. The Cretans, heartbroken, 
submitted to this decision, and since then have dragged 
on their existence, at one time under the sovereignty of 
the Pasha of Egypt, at another under that of his Majesty 
the Sultan. 

In recommending to us to submit to this decision of 
Europe, the President of Greece, the late Count Capodis- 
tria, who was greatly interested in us, led us to hope that 
this great misfortune would be of short duration, and that 
in a short while our wishes would be fulfilled. On the 
other hand, we received solemn promises that we should 
be governed in a kindly manner. 

Thirty-five years have elapsed since then, and during 
this long period our existence has not ceased to be ex- 
posed to every kind of oppressive injustice and misfor- 
tune. Not a traveller has visited our beautiful but unfor- 
tunate country without being touched by our sufferings. 

We pay enormous taxes, which are increased each year, 



Appe7tdix. 185 

without enjoying any of the advantages which all nations 
receive in return for such taxation. Justice is a thing 
unheard of. We have no tribunals worthy of that name ; 
nor have we any laws. Our government depends on the 
arbitrary will of the representative of the Sublime Porte. 
Our children, from want of public instruction, wallow in' 
ignorance ; the few schools we have are maintained at our 
own small means. The clergy are even paid by us. We 
are not admitted into the public service. We have no 
roads or bridges. Our evidence is of no avail against that 
of a Mussulman. The excesses committed by the Turks 
are rarely punished. We have never experienced any of 
the advantages enjoyed by the poorest subjects of civil- 
ized nations. We are the slaves of another race. 

The population of this unfortunate country, being un- 
able to bend itself to this state of things, has several 
times since 1830 found itself forced in its despair to have 
recourse to arms to recover its rights. At this present 
time it has again risen, and in abstaining from all acts of 
violence, it peaceably asks for justice from his Majesty the 
Sultan, the reduction of taxes, and an improvement in the 
administration. And if we, the most prudent, had not re- 
strained its impetuosity, the population would have flown 
to arms, to engage in its despair in an unequal and san- 
guinary contest. 

Madam, one of the reasons of state policy which led the 
great Powers to replace us under the dominion of Turkey, 
was no doubt the amount of the Mussulman population in 
our island, which was considered higher than that of the 
Christian population. 

But now the Turks compose but one-fourth of the whole 
population, which amounts to 300,000 souls. It is unjust 
that the most numerous should suffer on account of the 
lesser number, whereas if we were under a Christian go- 
vernment our Turkish brethren would enjoy the same 
happiness and the same advantages as ourselves. 

Moreover, in order to keep the country in subjection, 
Turkey is obliged to keep up an army and a fleet, and to 



i86 Appendix. 

spend enormous sums of money, without its being of much 
service to her, whereas Crete, if united to Greece, would 
confer great advantages on the whole Greek race, and 
would be able to embark on a system of civilization. If 
the creation of an Hellenic kingdom has for its object the 
regeneration of this people, Crete, which is purely Helle- 
nic country, would become one of its foundation stones. 

Madam, long experience has proved that, from the man- 
ner in which our island is governed, all improvement and 
all advancement are impossible for this wretched coun- 
try. 

We consequently entreat your Majesty and their Majes- 
ties the Sovereigns of the two other Protecting Powers of 
the Greek nation, to deign to excuse our one wish, viz., 
union with our brethren of Greece. 

It is only under this condition that we can be happy, 
and contribute to the advancement of our race. 

Should that, however, be impossible at present, we beg 
your Majesty, in your infinite goodness, to endeavor to 
obtain for us a political organization, under which there 
may be laws and regular tribunals, less grievous and bet- 
ter imposed taxes, by which the morality of the people 
may become possible, that at least one part of the reve- 
nues of the country should be expended on its improve- 
ment, and generally that our just grievances may be re- 
dressed by a Christian and paternal administration. 

This is what, in imploring the magnanimous interposi- 
tion of your Majesty, we venture to ask of the powerful 
monarchs of the three Great Powers. 

We sign ourselves, etc. 

The Deputies of the Section of Canea, Hera- 
dim, Rethymne, etc. 

Canea, May 15, 1866. 



Appendix, 187 



[Translation.} 

OFFICIAL INSTRUCTION TO THE GOVERNOR 
OF THE ISLAND OF CRETE, DATED 2 REEL 
UL-EVEL, 1283 (JULY 15, 1866). 

Your Excellency's despatches, with their enclosures, 
forwarded through Kadri Bey on his return from an offi- 
cial mission to Crete, have arrived, and his report on the 
state of affairs, as witnessed by him in that island, has 
been thoroughly understood. 

It was hoped and expected that the non-Mussulman 
inhabitants, who had assembled together in several dis- 
tricts of the province, would have listened to the benig- 
nant and paternal exhortations of the Imperial Govern- 
ment; that they would have broken up these assemblies, 
and, showing obedience and submission to authority, have 
returned to their own homes. And the reluctance of the 
Porte up to the present moment to inflict the punishment 
due to their offences has been based upon this expecta- 
tion. But it appears, on the contrary, that although these 
persons have made a show of breaking up their meetings, 
yet they have not abandoned their religious proceedings ; 
and it is evident that at the present time they are still 
continuing in the course of excitement and commotion. 
Now, according to the sense of the petitions which have 
reached the Porte on the part of these persons, both at 
the commencement of the affair and subsequently, the ob- 
ject of these assemblies Avas to obtain the abolition of cer- 
tain duties on such articles as tobacco, snuff, salt, and 
stamps ; the facilitating of the means of communication 
in the island ; reform in the election of the Medjliss or 
Demogerondia ; the prevention of the evil practice of 
wearing arms ; the formation of schools, hospitals, and 
Guch like institutions. 

But besides all these things, they have got certain ideas 
into their heads, to which they also now give expression. 

Now, from first to last, as is most manifest and natural, 



1 88 Appendix, 

the principal wish of the Imperial Government is to se- 
cure the tranquillity and welfare of all classes of its sub- 
jects ; and the inhabitants of Crete especially, and in many 
instances, have been the object of concessions and pecu- 
liar favor ; above all, in the matter of the property tax 
(" virgu"),. the sheep tax, and such like imposts which are 
levied in all other parts of the Ottoman dominions, the in- 
habitants of this island have alone been exempted. And up 
to the present day the Porte has never entertained the idea 
of depriving them of this indulgence. But the inhabitants 
of Crete now put forward a claim for the abolition of taxes 
which belong to a different category. For, as every one 
knows, the Porte some j^ears ago, solely with the view of 
increasing the exports from, its dominions, and in order to 
encourage and facilitate commercial enterprise, agreed to 
the abelition of the tax of 12 per cent, on exports to 
fereign countries ; and owing to the tax being oiminished 
at th© rat© of i per cent, annually, it will be reduced in 
the course of a few years to only i per cent, for a perma- 
nence. 

Inconsequence of this measure, the loss to the Imperial 
treasury amounts to more than 300,000 purses a year.* 
The abolition of this tax on exports being of immense be- 
nefit to the people of this empire, in order in some slight 
degree to compensate for the loss thus entailed, certain 
new taxes of universal application to all parts of the coun- 
try were imposed ; and as the people of the Island of Crete 
are amongst those most benefited by the abolition of the 
duty on exports, it is only just and natural that they 
should pay their share of the new imposts which were in- 
tended to make up the loss to the treasury. For, whilst 
the inhabitants of other places have had 50,000 purses 
added to their property tax,(" verghi"), in consequence of 
no such tax existing in Crete, no part in the payment of 
this augmentation falls to their lot. Crete, then, enjoy- 
ing as she does this exceptional favor and advantage, 
cannot with right and justice pretend to be exempted 

* A purse is 500 piastres. 



Appendix. 189 

from the imposts mentioned above. As regards the mat- 
ter of the construction of roads, bridges, hospitals, etc., it 
is true that such wishes are amongst the requirements of 
.the age, and the Porte is exceedingly anxious for the car- 
rying out of such useful projects. It is clear, moreover, 
that all countries and governments stand in need of im- 
provements of this kind. But their execution can only be 
effected by degrees, and according to convenience and 
opportunities. If the inhabitants of Crete required such 
public works and improvements, then it behooved them to 
make application to the Government at Constantinople, 
and in a manner consistent with their allegiance. But the 
essentially illegal and irregular demand for the abolition 
of taxes, the mixing up with this demand of other matters " 
which might possibly be conceded, and their proceedings 
in assembling together for the promotion of these objects, 
can only be regarded by intelligent persons as acts of re- 
bellion which cannot be tolerated, and they have now in- 
curred the extreme reprobation of the Imperial Govern- 
ment. 

In short, from the misconduct of this people up to the 
present time in declining to listen to advice, in imputing 
probably to erroneous motives the gracious clemency of 
his Imperial Majesty, who has hitherto delayed to visit 
their offences with punishment, and in preferring to fol- 
low the suggestions of seditious intrigues rather than the 
tranquillity and welfare of their families, it has become 
manifest that they will not be guided by prudential mo- 
tives. Henceforth, then, the Imperial Government is 
compelled to perform its duty. A military force will at 
once be despatched to a convenient locality, and in the 
first instance the orders and resolutions of the Porte will 
once more be made known to the inhabitants of Crete, 
viz., that in obedience to orders the assemblies should 
disperse, and each individual return to his own home 
and ordinary occupation, under the protection of the 
Sultan; and, if they have any demands to prefer, let 
them make them in a wise and decorous manner to the 



1 90 Appendix. 

Gov^ernment. But if they continue in the course ex- 
plained above, this will be regarded as a grave oflfence by 
the Government, and they will be dispersed b> force and 
visited with severe chastisement. Let them understand 
this and take warning. Let them break up their assem- 
blies, and giv^e assurances and obligations in writing to 
the effect that they wili no more act in contravention of 
the principle of submission to authority. 

If after this they immediately return to their homes and 
occupations, well and good. But if, on the contrarj'', they 
persist in their misconduct, the troops will be sent 
against them, and the ringleaders of the sedition will be 
arrested and imprisoned in the Sultan's fortresses, while 
the rest of the people will be dispersed by foi'ce ; and, in 
the event of their presuming to have recourse to arms, 
the)'- will meet Avith reprisals in kind and be severel)'- 
chastised. Should these persons dare to resist to arms, it 
will also be necessary to disarm them. 

Your Excellerxy is instructed to execute the measures 
necessarv in accordance with what is stated above. 



Appendix. 191 



[Translation.] 

T^EPLY OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE 
CRETANS TO THE ANSWER OF THE GRAND 
■ VIZIER TO THEIR PETITION. 

To His Highness the Grand Vizier : 

Your Highness: We, the Undersigned, the Represen- 
tatives of the Christian population of the Island of Crete, 
received yesterday (July 19), after a delay of three 
months, the answer of the Imperial Government to the 
humble petition we addressed to His Majesty the Sultan, 
which answer has been transmitted to us through his Ex- 
cellency the Governor-General of Candia. 

It is with great pain that we remark the silence kept in 
this answer in regard to the chief complaints in our peti- 
tion — that is to say, on what concerns the tribunals, free- 
dom of worship, personal liberty, the municipal elections, 
the use >f the Greek language, etc. 

It is also with pain and astonishment that we have 
learnt by this answer that not only we have no right to 
complain of direct and indirect taxes which weigh so 
heavily upon us, but that we are in a privileged position, 
in so far as regards other subjects of the empire, in refe- 
rence to the direct taxes — viz., the one under the denomi-, 
nation of "verghi" and that on sheep. 

Highness, we take the libert}'- to again call your kind 
attention to the following points : 

First. It is all the Christians of Candia, and not some, 
as it pleases your Highness to say, who think that they 
cannot in any way be compared to other subjects of the 
Porte in Avhat concerns the taxes since the period when, 
by the advice and under the guarantee of the great Chris- 
tian Powers, the Cretans submitted themselves to the 
Sublime Porte ; and it is notorious that since that period 
up to a few years ago they have not paid other taxes, 
direct or indirect, beyond tithes and the military tax, in 



192 Appendix, 

conformity with the law and decrees. It is true that the du. 
ties on exportation diminish gradually from one per cent, 
as is stated in the answer of the Porte. Nevertheless, in a 
country like Crete, where there is no industr)'-, the im- 
port duties, which still remain the same, neutralize the 
advantages arising out of the lowering of the export 
duties. Such being the case, we not only do not enjoy 
the benefits which your Highness is pleased to mention, 
but we are still crushed by the exorbitant taxes, which 
are far above our means, as is evident from the financial 
report of the last two years, during which time we have 
paid almost as much in taxes as the amount of our in- 
comes, without enjoying in return any material advantage. 

Secondly. In what concerns roads, schools, and hos- 
pitals, we do not doubt the benevolent intentions of His 
Majesty ; but the unfortunate inhabitants of Candia see 
with sorrow that the execution of these generous inten- 
tions is indefinitely postponed, notwithstanding the oft- 
repeated promises of the Sublime Porte. 

Thirdly. It is, nevertheless, our sacred duty to protest 
openly against the reproach addressed to us by your 
Highness, namely, that we had not made known our 
complaints to the Imperial Government in a respectful 
manner; that we had mixed up claims altogether inad- 
missible with those which might be entertained ; and 
that we had held meetings and made demonstrations 
which could not be considered otherwise than treasonable 
by all conscientious and impartial persons. To these 
reproaches we take the liberty to reply respectfully that 
in a country like Crete, where there is no press or parlia- 
ment, and that experience has shown that, whenever and 
in whatever manner the Christians have sought to obtain 
justice from the Sublime Porte, their mouths have been 
shut by intimidation and by low intrigues, we had no other 
means of bringing our grievances to the knowledge of our 
Sovereign, and of acquainting him with the real state of the 
country, beyond a recourse to a peaceable meeting without 
arms. It is also ourbounden duty- -we think so, at least 



Appendix. 193 

—to repeat here that all the Christians in Candia, without 
exception, took part in this manifestation, and not merely 
some of the inhabitants, as was said by the Governor- 
General, and which is believed by your Highness. 

It would be absurd, your Highness, almost childish, to 
assume that the Representatives of the Christian popula- 
tion of Candia have obeyed or. obey the suggestions of 
foreigners, and that the Central Committee is exciting the 
people and acting in a seditious spirit. Such allegations 
are only put forward by those impostors and wicked men 
who,whetherMohammedans or Christians, are imbued with 
the most hostile feelings towards the Imperial Govern- 
ment and towards the Candiotes, and are only interested 
in imposing upon the goodness of our gracious Sovereign. 
It is notorious that the demonstration of the Candiote 
people is quite spontaneous, and that the assemblage of 
Cretans, far from compromising public tranquillity, was 
to upset the projects of such wicked people who seek for 
any pretext for calumny. 

Finall)^ Ave, the undersigned, the Representatives of 
the Candiote people, not considering ourselves as rebels, 
cannot answer for the future by solemn declarations 
(" senets ") in the name of a people which has only confided 
to us expressly and in writing a limited authority, namel)'-, 
to forward its petition and to receive the answer which 
may be returned thereto. 

It is this answer alone \vhich we have in consequence 
bound ourselves to bring to the knowledge of the people, 
with the fullest confidence in the promises of the Imperial 
Government, which has declared that the persons fulfilling 
this sacred duty need not fear the threats made to them. 
It is for your Highness to arrive at such a decision as may 
be dictated by a sense of justice and conscientious feeling 

Done at Prosnero, July 20, 1866. 

We have, etc., 

The Members of the Central Committee. 

(Here follow the signatures 



r94 Appendix. 

TRANSLATION OF AN ADDRESS TO THE EURO- 
PEAN CONSULS OF THE CHRISTIAN DEPU- 
TIES, ASSEMBLED UNDER THE NAME OF THE 
GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF CRETANS, SITTING 
AT PROSNERO, CANTON OF APOCORONA. 

MM. LES Consuls: The Representativ'es of the Chris- 
tian people of the Isle of Crete, respectfully undersigned, 
assembled under the title of the Assembly General of the 
Cretans, feel it our imperative duty to call you .to bear 
witness to the violence Avhich obliges us, in spite of our 
wishes to the contrary, to take up arms by right of lawful 
defence, 

Greeks by origin and by tongue, having taken part in 
the struggle borne by our brothers in 1821 for our national 
independence, but yet not having profited by the advan- 
tages of that war, our only object in assembling here is 
to claim the enjoyment of the rights which were guaran- 
teed to us by the three Protecting Powers by Treaties 
and Protocols, and of those which His Imperial Majesty 
the Sultan deigned spontaneously to decree to us by a 
Hatti-Humayoun. 

But the Governor-General, changing the meaning and 
the point of our humble petition, by which we claimed 
pacifically, and without resorting to arms, the execution 
of written promises, after leaving us for three months in a 
state of uncertainty, finally incited the Porte to return an 
unfavorable and menacing answer, and, opposing violence 
to right, he appeared before us in arms. 

Calling the Representatives of the protecting and gua- 
ranteeing Powers to bear witness to this, we take up arms 
for our defence and safety, and we make the Turkish 
Government responsible before the civilized world for all 
the consequences of the struggle which is about to break 
out. 

Done at Prosneron, July 20-21, 1866. 

The humble Representatives of the Christian 
People of the Isle of Crete. 
(Here follow the signatures of 46 Deputies.) 



Appendix, 195 

[Extract.] 

LORD LYONS TO LORD STANLEY.— (Received 
September 7.) 

CoNSTANTIKOI'LE, AugUSt 28, 1866. 

I had, on the 25th instant, the honor to receive your 
Lordship's despatches respecting the affairs of Crete, ot 
the i3Lh instant. 

Yesterday, in obedience to 5'our Lordship's instructions, 
I informed A'aU Pasha that Her Majesty's Government 
strongly advise the Porte to deal with the Cretans Avith 
the utmost forbearance and in a conciHatory spirit, to 
redress any grievances of Avhich they may have cause to 
complain, to relieve them from any exceptional treatment 
which bears hard upon them, and generally to study to 
reconcile them to the Sultan's Government. I added, 
that Her Majesty's Government conceive that in the pre- 
sent state of the Continent of Europe, it would be a great 
misfortune to Turkey if any question were to arise which 
should excite the sympathies of Europe in favor of the 
resistance of Christian subjects of the Sultan to the Otto- 
man Government, and that it is manifestly most important 
to the interests of the Porte that the Provincial authori- 
ties should be enjoined to act justly and in a kindly spirit 
towards the Christians. 

A'ali Pasha said that he entirely concurred in the views of 
Her Majesty's Government. He told me that it had been 
definitivehr'settled that Mustapha Kiritli Pasha should be 
sent to Crete with large powers ; that this measure would 
show the Cretans that their petition had been seriously 
taken into consideration by the Sultan ; and that he had 
reason to hope that order would very soon be restored. 

I said that I hoped that Mustapha Pasha's powers were 
not merely conferred with a view to quelling the present 
resistance of the Christian Cretans, but that they were to 
be exerted for the purpose of removing causes of com- 
plaint and placing matters in the island on a footing likely 
t.o be permanently satisfactor}% 



1 96 Appendix. 

A'ali Pasha said that Mustapha Pasha would be empoAV- 
ered to take into consideration all reasonable complaints, 
which were brought before him in a loyal and dutiful 
spirit, but, of course, he would not listen to men unlaw- 
fully assembled in defiance of the Government, and would 
repress revolt and treasonable attempts to change the 
relation of the island to the Porte. On being further 
pressed by me, A'ali Pasha said that no Christian blood had 
been shed ; that he was confident none would be shed ; 
and that it was the earnest desire of the Porte to avoid, if 
possible, a collision between the troops and the Christians. 
He added that he was convinced that the movement was 
due to foreign instigation, and that, if that instigation 
ceased, it would rapidly subside. 



INDEX 



A'ali Pasha arrives in Crete, 143, 14S ; 
rebuilds church at Lakus, 157 

Ahdoti^ 128 

Abdul Aziz, Sultan, accession, 36; 
rarje over Oete, iii 

Abdul Aledjid, Sultan, deceased, 36 

Arsndallos, a Moreote chieftain, 30 

Agios Basiltos, 126, 131, 135 

A^ics Kouiiicli, 133 

Alikianu, plain of, 88,107; town, 156 

All Riza Pasha, movement a.^ainst 
Omalos, 105 ; rescued, 106 ; beat- 
en at TopoLia, 120 

Amari, 106, 135 

American Secretary of Legation at 
Constantinople, 116 ; intrigue 
against Consul StiUnian, iiS 

Ano/>oiis, 132, 133 

Apokoroiut district, 54, 58; Egyp- 
tians surrender, 66 ; movemsnt 
against, 74, 89 

Armiena, 133 

" Arethusa " man-of-vrar. or 

Arkadi. convent of, 83 ; bombardment 
of, 84 ; butchery at, 86 ; effect on 
European opinion, go 

" Arkadi," blockade-runner, 114 

As/end II, 132 

Askypho. 71, 82. 102, 132 

Assembly at jNIurnies (10331, 33; at 
Nerokouro (iSsS), 35, (1S64), 36; 
at Oraulo, gathers April 12, 1865, 
moves to Boutzounuria and Nero- 
kouro, 41; games at Boutzou- 
naria, 42 ; sends a deputation of 
captains witli a petition to the 
l^orte, refuses to adjourn when 
ordered by Ismael Pasha, 43 ; in- 
sists on a promise of immunity, 
dissolution urged by all friendi}^ 
consuls, 47 ; decided by Parthe- 
nius Kehikles and Joannides, 48 : 
committee retreat to the moun- 
tains, 48 ; counter-proclamation 
to Mustapha's, 68 : provisional 
government, headed by Mavro- 
Gordato, 123; appeals for Coro- 
neos to become commander-in- 
chief, 151 

" Assurance " sloop-of-\var, 91 

Haleste, a French Philhellene, 30 

lUrnin, Mr., English charge at Con- 
stantinople, 141 



Bishop of Can^a threatened witli 
burning, 29 ; (another), heroic end, 

Bondapoulo, 78 

Bonii'ace, Duke of Moutserrat, pos- 
sesses Crete, 20 

Borlhwick, Col., adventure at Me- 
skla, 162 

Boucakoff, commander of " Grand 
Admiral," 76, 96 ; ordered to the 
Sphakian coast, 98 

Bouizounaria, seat of the Assembly, 
41, 42 ; source of water supply of 
Canea, 42 ; attack on aqueduct, 
121 

Bulgaris, evil genius of Greece, 145 : 
tool of Russia, 146; withdraws all 
support from Crete, 152 

Ca'iipos, 78 

'■ Canandaigua," American ship-of- 
war, 117 

Cauditnos, fortress, refuge of Mussul- 
mans, 66 ; expedition for relief of, 
67. 69 

Catidia, 106, 125 

Cave-stifling at Kephala, 79 ; in My- 
lopotamos, 12S, 137 

Christians persecuted in Crete, 27, 
29; panic and exodus, 51, 52. 57; 
massacres, 64, 65 ; stifled in caves, 
79, 128, 137 

Colucci, Italian consul, advises giv- 
ing an assurance to the Assembly, 
45'; \vins tlie Pasha's ill-will, 47 

Comitades^ pass, 102 

Comoundouros, premier at Athens, 
114 ; prepares insurrection in Tur- 
key, 116 ; dismissal effected by 
Russia, 143 

Consular corps summoned by Ismael 
Pasha, 44 ; vetuse him support, 46 ; 
protest against calling in the Mus- 
sulmans, 50 ; unite in prevent- 
ing a Mussulman outbreak, pro- 
tect Christian refugees, 57 ; fortify 
the consulates, 59 ; side with 
Schahin Pasha against Ismael, 62 

CorOneos, Col., timely arrival, 83; 
headquarters at Arkadi, 83 ; 
unites witli Zimbrakakis to de- 
fend Omalos, So ; moves east- 
ward, 95 : oii'jrations on Mt. Idi, 
qq: at "K.dliknili, 123; attacks 



200 



Index. 



Omar at Margaritas, 125 ; at Kal- 
likrati, i^i ; tails back on Askyio, 
holds Muri, 132 ; drives Reschid, 
133. 135 ; wanted for commander- 
in-chief, 151 

Cretans, the "best types of ancient 
Greeks, 13 ; ancestors, 14 ; pre- 
sent characteristics, 16, 19 

Crete, climate and products, 13 ; anti- 
quities, 14, 16 ; present inhabit- 
ants, 16; language, 17, 18; litera- 
ture, iS ; music, 19; conquered 
by Saracens, 19; recovered by- 
Byzantine emperors, 23 ; trans- 
ferred to Boniface, and sold to 
Venetian Republic, 20 ; cruel 
government, 20-26 ; conquest by 
furks favored, 26 ; Turkish rule, 
26-37 ; Sphakiole insurrection of 
1770, 27 ; of 1821, 29-31 ; united 
by the allied powers to govern- 
ment of Mehemet All, Egyptian 
regime, 32-34 ; assembly at Mur- 
nies in 1833, repression by Musta- 
pha Pasha, 33; insurrection of 
1840, 34 ; Assembly of 185S. 34 ; of 
1864, 36 ; hardships preceding tlie 
insurrection of 1866, 36 

Criaris, a Cretan chief, 105 

Damasia, 127, 128. 

Dante's description of Crete. 26 

Dendrino, Russian consul, sincere in 
advising against insurrection, but 
probably strengthened Parthe- 
nius, 48 ; character, 96 ; orders a 
frigate to tlie Sph.akian coast, 98 

Deportations, 92, 99, 140, 142 

Derche, French consul, supports Is- 
mael Pasha in everything, 44 ; 
urges violent dispersal of tire 
Assembly, 45 ; confirms the Pasha 
against consular protests, 46 ; 
labors to provoke a collision, 52 ; 
intrigue withSchahin Paslia, 54; 
refuses to ask for a man ol-war, 
57 ; recalled, 122 

IHbaki, port, 130, 133 

Dickson, English consul, humane 
and honest, ordered to co-opera. e 
witli his French colleague, 44 ; 
supports Ismael I^nsha against tne 
Assembly, 45 ; declares an assur- 
ance unnecessary, 46 ; refuses to 
ask for a man-of-war, 57 ; reports 
the atrocities at A rkadi, 90 ; pro- 
poses to send a ship to pick up 
Cretan families, 92 ; dispatch on 
the affair at Krapi, \o\ ; captured 
by Cretans near ("aiitvi, 150 

Dimitrikanikos.an Hellenic chief. T25 

Diodorus Siciilus, on the lirst inhab- 
itants of Crete, 14 

Egyptian regime in Crete, 33; troops 
in Crete, 30, 31; under Scha- 
hin Pasha," 55: at Vrvsis, 63,64, 
66; as found by Mustajiha, 63; 



beaten at Stylos, 78 ; driven to 
the assault of Arkadi, 85 ; suffer- 
ings in the mountains, go; slaugh- 
ter at Krapi, 104 ; recalled home, 
122 ; losses at Sime, 130 

" Ennosis" blockaded at Syra, 152 

EfiskoJ>i, 84, 123; surprised, 99 

Erskine, English minister at Athens, 
107 

Fair at Omalo, April, 1863, 38 ; turned 
into an Assembly, 41 

Foligniaco, Venetian raid on, 25 

Franco Castelli port, 102, 130 

Gaiduropolis, 132. 

Geissler (Dilaver Pasha), Turkish 
chief of Artillery, 124; death, 134 

Cnassiis, 128 

Goldsborough, Rear-Admiral, loi, 
116 

Cral'itsa, captured by Kalergis, 32 

'■Grand Admiral," Russian frigate, 
76; ordered to assist in deporta' 
tion, 96 

Greek Government and the insurrec- 
tion, 63, 112, 114; under Russian 
influence, 145 ; ostentatious pre- 
tence of aiding the revolt, 151 

Halard, 135 

Hobart Pasha blockades the " Enno- 
sis" at Syra, 152 

Homer, account of Ancient Crete, 14, 

Nosii, 105 

Hussein Avni replaces Mustapha, 
I [S ; locum tenens of Omar Pasha, 
ravages plains of Kissauios, 120, 
block-house plan, 148 

Ida, IMt.. 83, 99 

Ignatieff, Gen., Russian minister, 96, 
99 ; prevents Mr. Stillman's re- 
call, 120 

Insurrection of 1866. preparation, 42- 
52 ; first bloodshed, 52 ; overtures 
from Schahin Pasha, 54 ; first 
Mussulman blood, 56 ; collision 
at Selinos, 63, 64; general out- 
break of hostilities, 65 ; \'rysis 
taken, 66 ; engagement at Kako- 
petra, 70; at Mabixa, 72 ; L.akus 
abandoned. Zurba held, 73 ; 
Thcriso lost, 73 ; stand at Stylos. 
78; Campos abandoned, 78; Vafe 
lost ; retreat to Askyfo ; loss of 
confidence in Greek volunteers, 
82 ; revived by Coroneos, S3 ; Ar- 
kadi lost, 84-87; Kissamos be- 
sieged, Omalos defended, 89; 
shut up in Sphakian Mountains, 
collapse imminent, 94 ; revival in 
Eastern S|)hakia,c,.K Turks shut 
u\i in Retimo, ico ; affa>r at Krapi, 
103 ; defeat of Ali Riza Pasha, 
105; of Reschid KITemli, 106; aia 
from the Greek Government, 715 ; 
defeat of Ali Ri/.a Pasha at Topo- 
lia, :2o; of Mchmet Pasha at 



Index. 



20I 



Krapi, and Omar Pasha at KalU- 
kratii, 23; reinforcements in the 
east, 125 ; Omar shut up at Mar- 
garitas, 126 ; Reschid bea'en at 
Lasithe, 129 ; Omar atliukeil at 
Kallikrati, 131; at Aradcnu, n; ; 
checked at Agios Rouuicii, 13-;: 
retreat to Canea, 135; Kcscnid 
killed, 135 ; armistice, i.|2 ; pusil- 
lanimous surrender of volunteers, 
151 ; collapse, 152 
Ismael Gibraltar, 31 ; killed, 78 
Ismael Pasha, appointed governor, 
outwits the Assembly ot 1S64, 36 ; 
hated for his extortions and cruel- 
tyi 37; quarrels with Consul 
Stillman, 3S ; shirks the apology 
ordered by the Porte, 39 ; makes 
a present of a paste intaglio, 40; 
orders the Assembly at Houtzou- 
naria to disperse, 43; calls a con- 
ference of the consular corps, 
44 ; threatens to disperse the As- 
sembly by force, 45 ; fails to get 
the support of the consular corps, 
46; calls in the jNlussulmans to 
the walled cities, 50 ; attacked 
with fever, 55 ; arms his co-reli- 
gionaries, 57 ; superseded by 
Mustapha Kiritli. 58 ; quarrel 
with Schahin Pasha, 62; with- 
draws Turkish supports.lrora him, 
demands a battalion of Egyptians, 
63 ; unnerved at Cretan successes, 
66; packed off to Constantinople, 
67. 
Italian words in Cretan speech, 18 

ianissary sway in Crete, 28 
oannides, a Greek physician, decides 

the Assembly not to dibperse, 48 
Kakof>etra^ ravine of. 70 
Kaiergis, a Greek chief, 31 
Kalli/o-aii. pass, 123, 130 
Kalyves^ 78 
Knres, 132 

Kephald, cave-stifling, 79 
Keramta, movement against, 72, 73 
KiinU/<a, 57 
Kissainos, captured by Kaiergis. 32 ; 

besieged by volunteers, 89; plain 

districts ravaged, 120 
Korakas a Cretan chieftain, gg 
Krapi, 7S, 88, 99, passage by the 

Turks, 103; attack of Mehmet 

Pasha, 123 
Kr7istogheTako. pass, 90 
Lah-ics, movement against, 72, 73. 

157; reoccupied by Cretans, S3 ; 

abandoned, 8g : situation, 157 ; 

church-bell strife, 158 
L^^sithe, 125; attacked, 128 
Lasithe £'//>«(;'/ mountain, 129 
/.rt.«V/ir/ district, 83 
Icvantinc, a person of foreign an- 
cestry, born and bred in Turkey, 



Loulri\ a port of Sphakia, 94 
Lyons, Lord, 56, 97, 113 
McDonald, Capt., 61 
jNIainote irregulars, 95, gg 



Mala 



127 



Mala.va, block-house attacked, 72 

jNlanosouyanaki, a Cretan captain, 73 

Marraritas, 126 

Mai'i]ea, 129 

Mavrocordato appointed president 
by the Cretans, 123 

Mehemet Ali, awarded Crete by the 
allies, 32 ; oppression, 1; 

jNIehmet Ali, ■' the PnissiLin," 174 

Mehmet Paslui guards Krapi, SS ; out- 
flanks Thenso, 8y ; attack on 
Krapi, 123; shut up at Kares, 
132; driven back to V'ryses, 133 

Ulelambos, 135 

Melidoni, Antoni, a Cretan captain, 
29 ; assassinated, 30 

Meskla, 159 

Jllessara, 106, 129, 130 

Mikhail, Hadji, of Lakus, Si : reoccu- 
pies Lakus and Theriso, S3 ; suc- 
cesses near Canea, 83 ; fights Ali 
Riza Pasha, 105 ; character, 106, 
163, 168 

Morris, Hon. E. Joy, U. S. Minister 
at Constantinople, 97, loi, iig 

Moustier, Marquis de, plan to trans- 
fer Crete to Viceroy of Egypt, 

J\Iur>iies, 25; Assembly at, in 1833, 
33 ; executions at, 34 

Murra}', commander of " Wizard," 
62, 91 ; letter to Minister Erskine, 
107 ; visit to Omar, 137 

Music of the Cretans, 19 

Mustapha Pasha (Kiritli), the "Al- 
banian butcher,'' 33, 34 ; made 
Imperial Commissioner, 58 ; ar- 
rival, 67 ; summons insurgents to 
submit, 68 ; relieves Candanos, 
69 ; retreat harassed, 70 ; return 
to Canea, 71 ; moves against La- 
kus, Theriso. and Keramia, re- 
lieves Malaxa. 72 ; attacks Zurtaa, 
occupies Theriso, 73 ; march on 
Krapi, opposed at Stylos, takes 
Campos, 78; carries \'afe, 81; 
tarries at Prosnero, takes Arkadi, 
- 82-87: return to Canea. prepares 
for Theriso campaign, 88 ; moves 
through the passes of Kissamos, 
89 ; ravages the valleys of Seli- 
nos. go ; permits Dickson to ship 
off Cretan families, 92 ; embarks 
at Suia. repulsed at St. Rumseli 
and Tripiti, returns to Seiinos, 
95; removes to Askyfo, 102; 
losses at Krapi, 104 ; orders an 
attack on Omalos, 105; slights 
Capt. Strong. 117: replaced by 
Hussein Avni, nS 
i\Iylopotai!io^ 125, 127 



202 



Index. 



Navariiio. result of battle on Cretan 
insurrection, 31 

Nc7-okvuro, seat of the Assembly of 
1858. 35 

Nicolaides, an Hellenic chief, 133 

Nikephoras Phocas drives the tara- 
cens from Crete, 20 

Omalos, annual fair at, April, 1S65, 
38 ; turned into an Assembly, 41 ; 
situation, 74, 89, 90, 105, 165 ; con- 
centration of insurgents and vol- 
unteers at, 89 ; attacked by AH 
Kiza Pasha, 105; expedition 
against, 135 

Omar Pasha arrives, 121 ; moves on 
Sphaliia, 122 ; attaclvS Kalliki^- 
ti, 123 ; faithlessness, lust, and 
cruelty, 124 ; sets out for Candia, 

125 ; bottled up at INIargaritas, 

126 ; rescued by Reschid EfFendi, 
i?7 ; orders an attack on Lasithe, 
128 ; prepares for Sphakian cam- 
fiaig-n, 130 ; attacked at Kalli- 
krati, 131; at Aradena, 133; 
transports his troops to Agios 
Roumeli and to Canea, 133 ; loss- 
es, I ^4 ; gets the ill-will ofVrench 
consul, 138 ;• proclamation of am- 
nesty, 142; return in disgrace 
148 

Osman Pasha, 52 

Outrey, l<"rench minister at Constan- 
tinople, 141 

Paget, Ilord Clarence, arrives in the 
'• Psvche," 61 

" Panhellenion " blockade-runner, 74, 

Pappadakis, Dr., see Joannides 
Parthenius Kelaides, priest, decides 

the Assembly not to disperse, 48. 
Pashley, on the Venetian rule in 

Crete, 20-26 ; on the rule of Mus- 

taphp Kiritli, 34 
Pediada, 128. 130, 134 
Pergaiiws^ 156 
/'erivogiiti. 42 
-, Petropoulaki, Mainole chieftain, 90; 
•' jealousy, 127, 133; made head'ol 

Greek Government's expedition, 

Platanos (lardanos) river, 156 

Porte, cliange of policy, 109 ; procla- 
maiion, no: threatens to revoke 
Consul Stillman's exequatur, 119 

Proi'ticro, 82 

" Psyche" despatch-boat. 61. 

Pyra, commander of "Assurance," 
91 ; carries Cretan families to the 
Firreus, 92 ; act disapproved by 
government, 53 

Reign of terror, 57-60 

Reschid Effendi drives back the in- 
surgents, too; moves on Amari, 
106; ordered to join Omar. 123 ; 
rescues him. 127; attacks Lasi- 
the, 128, 129: marches from J\- 



baki, 131, to Askyfo, 132 ; rescues 
jNIehmet, 132; driven back to 
Kallikrati, 133 ; fatally wounded 
at Melambos, 135 

Retinw, 33, 84, 99, IOC 

Rkizo, 74 

Rhizo Casiron^ 129 

Rogers, E. T., Acting English Con- 
sul-General at Beyrout, 142 

Romaic and Cretan speech compar- 
ed, 17, 18 

Russia's relations to the insurrection, 
76. 77 ; Russian minister at (Con- 
stantinople sends a ship to aid in 
deportation, 96, 99; intrigues 
with the Viceroy, 122 ; agreement 
with France, 137 ; encourage- 
ment to the revolt, 143 ; over- 
throws Comoundouros ministry, 

Russos, a Sphakiote chief, 30 

Sacopoulos, Greek consul, gi 

Samaria, impenetrable fortress, 27, 
95, 133 ; glen of. 166; chapel, J72 

Saracen conquest of Crete, ig 

Sarpi. Fra Paolo, advice to Venetian 
senate, 23 

Schahin Pasha, general-in-chief of 
Egyptians, 53"; intrigue with the 
French consul, 54 ; fruitless mis- 
sion to the Apokorona, 54; ap- 
proaches Consul Stillman, 55; 
difference witli Ismael, 62 ; re- 
fuses liim troops, 64 

Scylax on the settlement of Crete, 14 

Seiiniotes, 16 

Selinos shut in by insurgents, 63; 
second sortie, 64 ; third sortie, 66 ; 
entered by Mustapha, go, 135 

Server Effendi sent to Crete, log ; 
character, in ; compels dele- 
gates to go to Constantinople, 

Sewanf^ Hon. Wm. H., instructions 
to Consul Slilimaii,, loi ; de'-patch 
to Minister Morris, iig ; decides 
to recall Stillman, 120, 144 

Shne, 130 

Simon, French Admiral, ordered to 
Cretan coast, 141 

Silia, 143 

Skoulas, a Cretan chieftain, 106, 127 

Smolenski, an Hellenic cliief, 133 

Soliotis, an He'lenic officer, 8g, at 
Krapi, 123, 132 

Sphakian mountains, 73 

Spliakiotes, 16; insurrectlc:: of 1770, 

Spratt, on the geology of Crete, 14 

St. Irene pass surprised, 90 

St. Roumeli x'w&r^ 172 

St. Rumscliy entrance to Samarid, 95 

St^ Thoiitas, 107, 130 

Stanley, Lord, i4t, 142 

Steedman, (."ommodore. Ca 

Stillman, AVilliam J., U. S. constil, 



Q^^ R D - 8 9. 



Index. 



!03 



orr'ives in Crete in summer of 
1865, 36 ; plans a jouriic}' to Splia- 
kia via Omalos, opposed by Is- 
maf:l Pasha, consulate violated, 
broil with the Pasha, 3S ; check- 
mates him at Constantinople, 39 ; 
and in Canea, 40; returns a spu- 
rioias gem, 40 ; abandons the 
jou'rney to Sphakia, 41 ; pro- 
tests ag^ainst usinn- violence to- 
wards the Assembly, 46 ; remon- 
straites against the conduct of a 
dervish, 52 ; approached by 
Schahin Pasha, 55; besieged in 
liis home, 59 ; advises Schahin 
Pasha to disobey Ismael, 63 • 
warns Mustapha of the result of 
his successes, 75 ; hopes after 
Ark:adi, 88 ; urges European in- 
tervention, Turkish espionage. 



Am^erican ship-of-war, 101; rude 
treatment from officers of the 
" C»tnandaiE;ua," 117; sends his 
family to Syra, lives on yacht 
" Kestrel," 118 ; anxious to leave 
the island, iiq; recall determin- 
ed on at Washington, trip to 
Cerigotto, 120; to Candia, 129; 
sends first news to Constantino- 
ple, 130: excites Tricou against 
Omur, 138; favors acceptance of 
A'ali Pasha's terms, 1(4; scorbu- 
tic iJlness, i.tg ; witnesses a skir- 
mish between Zurba and Lakus, 
159 ; leaves Crete under medical 
ordr;rs, 150: death of Mrs. Slill- 
nian,is4: deposed by Secretary 
Fish, revisits.C'rete alter the war, 
154: trip to Omalos, 155 ; mission 
to C'onstantino])le. 175 
Strong, captain of ship " Canandai- 
gua," 117 



Suda Bc!}\ 61 

Suiii, ol Selinos, 92, 95 

'J'e>i!C7!os, 127 

TJieriso^ movement against, 72, 73; 
occupied, 74; reoccupied by Cre- 
tans, 83, 83, 89 

" Ticonderoga," corvette, 61 

Tombasis, a Hydnote chief, 31 

'J'opolia, 120 

Tricou, French consul, succeeds Der- 
che, 122 ; refused permission to 
accompany Omar Paslia, 125 
makes a list of atrocities, 137 ; 
despatch, 138 

Trifiiti, 95 

Turkish rule in Crete, 26-37 

Turkish words in Cretan speech 17, 
18 

Vafc, 78. attacked, 81 

Veloudakj, Costa, of Sphakia, 81 : sur- 
prises' Episkopi, 99 ; at Krapi, 
123 

Venetian Republic purchases Crete, 
20 ; barbarous regime, 20-25 

Volunteers distrusted, 82; behave 
badly, and are carried home, 94; 
Maiiiote reinforcements, 95 ; sur- 
render, 151 

Vrysis, 55, 123, 132, 133; held by 
Egyptians, 63; threatened by 
Cretans, 64 ; taken, 66 ; effect on 
Greek Government, 68 

White Mountains, 73 

"Wizard" gun-boat, 62, 66 ; ordered 
to JMalta. gi 

Xyioscala^ 166 

Yennisarli, a Greek chief, 93 

Yeyakari, 106 

Zebeques, dance of, iCS 

Zimbrakaki, commander of volun- 
teers. 81 ; joins Coroneos, 89 , at- 
tacked by AH Riza Pasha, 105 ; 
inertness, 106, 133 ; at Krapi, 1^3; 
pursued b)'^ Omar, 132 

Zurba^ attacked, 73, 149 




JAN 7 9; 

ST.jMJGUSTINE 

FLA. 

32084 



